
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 25, 1990                   TAG: 9004250196
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TULTEX ELECTION URGED/ OBJECTIONS BY UNION SET ASIDE

A National Labor Relations Board hearing officer has recommended that a new union election be held at Tultex Corp. in Martinsville after he overruled 18 union objections to a vote taken in September.

The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union lost an intense election in September by 250 votes and the union later filed a series of objections to the company's campaign before the election and its actions during the voting.

Some of the objections were related to the ballots challenged by the union and by the NLRB. An NLRB hearing on the objections was held in Martinsville two months ago.

The recommendation by James Palermo, NLRB hearing officer, will go to the full NLRB in Washington.

The sweat suit manufacturer said it is weighing the options of filing exceptions to Palermo's report or going forward with another election.

Palermo overruled 18 union objections and overruled in part and sustained in part four other objections. He also found company conduct "not specifically alleged to be objectionable," Art DePalma of the NLRB regional office in Winston-Salem said.

A Tultex statement said the company was surprised by the objections sustained by Palermo "because they involved four or five isolated statements allegedly made over a three-month period to several employees out of a group of nearly 3,000 voters."

Palermo's recommendation to sustain parts of four objections and order a new election "is wrong both factually and legally," the company said.

Even if the statements were made to several employees, Tultex said, the alleged conduct is insufficient legally to warrant a new vote.

Both ACTWU and the company conducted strong campaigns to win employee votes.

After the election, the union said the company "mounted a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar campaign of fear and pressure to influence the votes of workers."

The company used movies, multimedia productions, radio commercials, many meetings with supervisors and payments to workers from other plants in its anti-union campaign, ACTWU said.

At the annual Tultex stockholder meeting in March, John Franck, company president, said the election campaign resulted in "missed production quotas, late deliveries, heavy cancellations and high year-end inventories, all of which severely impacted earnings" for the year.

Tultex reported net income of $5 million last year, down from $21.3 million in 1988.

After challenged ballots were counted, the final vote in the September election was 1,481 against the union and 1,231 for ACTWU.

The union lost earlier elections at Tultex in 1979 and 1981.

by CNB