The Sacramento Press, November 9, 2009, Monday

The Sacramento Press

November 9, 2009, Monday

The Sacramento Press

Sacramento County and Blue Diamond: Management tactics when employees organize

Efforts to form labor unions in Sacramento shed light on what public- and private-sector workers face in organizing across the United States.

The Sacramento County Management Association is made up of more than one-third of all nonunion managers in the county. To gauge their interest in forming a union, the board of SCMA has given 1,172 managers the option to vote on forming a union by signing cards indicating their choice. The process began Sept. 26. Approximately 300 cards must be collected by mid-December to hold a vote to choose a union in early 2010.

Unrepresented Sacramento County managers oversee employees who deliver services in airports, courts, health, parks and public works, among other agencies.

Sue Elliott, chief of administrative services for the Sacramento County district attorney’s office, is president of the association. What set the SCMA vote process into motion was a straw poll at a spring luncheon indicating that 46 percent of those attending were interested in forming a union, she said.

“This decision is predicated upon the fact that the county has called into question management benefits that were given in lieu of pay raises over the years,” she said. Those benefits range from cost-of-living-adjustments to sick and vacation days and 401(k) retirement plans.

Employees who belong to a union have collective-bargaining agreements requiring that any changes to their contracts be negotiated. So, in Sacramento County, nonunion managers are at higher risk of job, wage and benefit cuts than their union counterparts.

County executive Terry Schutten declined to comment on SCMA’s move. Steve Keil, the county’s director of labor relations, said Sacramento County has "no position on SCMA exercising its rights under the law.”

The Blue Diamond Growers almond processing plant in Sacramento offers a glimpse of what can happen when private-sector workers seek representation.

According to Blue Diamond employee, Frank Garcia, after the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 17 began to organize workers five years ago, Blue Diamond hired a firm to make employees fearful of voting to join the union. To date, the plant has no unions.

Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner is director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her research shows that from 1999 and to 2003, private employers used nearly five times the number of anti-union tactics as public employers.

"In 48 percent of public-sector campaigns,” she notes in her 2009 report “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” the employer did not campaign at all —no letters, no leaflets, and no meetings."

The Blue Diamond campaign appears to match U.S. workplace trends. American employers more than doubled their use of anti-union tactics against employees attempting to form unions between 1999 and 2003, according to Bronfenbrenner. In “No Holds Barred,” she analyzed a random sample of 1,004 NLRB union election campaigns, and conducted in-depth surveys with head union organizers in 562 of the campaigns.

Sixty-three percent of employers were reported to use mandatory one-on-one, anti-union meetings with employees. Further, 57 percent of employers threatened to close the workplace, 47 percent of employers issued threats to slash benefits and wages, and 34 percent of employers fired workers during union organizing drives.

"Both the intensity and changing character of employer behavior, as well as the fundamental flaws in the NLRB process,” Bronfenbrenner writes, “have left us with a system where workers who want to organize cannot exercise that right without fear, threats, harassment, and/or retribution."

Under the NLRB election process, 276,353 workers organized in 1970. By 1999, the year that Bronfenbrenner's latest study begins, 106,699 workers had won union representation through elections. In 2003, 71,427 workers organized. According to her findings, the decline is because of employer behavior such as threats, interrogation, promises, surveillance and retaliation for union activity. Bronfenbrenner confirmed every unfair labor practice mentioned by survey respondents through Freedom of Information Act requests to the NLRB.

She questions how much freedom American workers have regarding unionization.

"[E]mployers have control of the communication process. In today's organizing climate they take full advantage of that opportunity to communicate with their employees through a steady stream of letters, leaflets, e-mails, digital electronic media, individual one-on-one meetings with supervisors, and mandatory captive-audience meetings with top management during work time."

In her view, private employers try to neutralize union campaigns, emphasizing "interrogation and surveillance to identify supporters." If that fails, Bronfenbrenner says, "threats and harassment" follow "to try to dissuade workers from supporting the unions." She found that the union election win-rate for public-sector employees is nearly double that of private-sector workers.

Sacramento County's Keil said that if a majority (50 percent plus one vote) of nonunion managers vote for representation, the county executive’s office would begin to meet with the SCMA. One item for discussion would be job titles, or classes, under a collective bargaining agreement between the new union and the county, he said.

Seth Sandronsky lives and writes in Sacramento. Contact ssandronsky@yahoo.com