Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 18, 1992 TAG: 9201180195
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WESTVACO UPHELD IN CLIPPING UNION LEADER'S BENEFITS
U.S. District Judge James Turk has ruled that Westvaco Corp.'s payment of fringe benefits to a union president was illegal under the Labor Management Relations Act. In the ruling, Turk upheld the company's action 2 1/2 years ago to halt the payments.Local 675 of the United Paperworkers Union at Westvaco's Covington paperboard mill had charged the company with breach of contract after it stopped paying benefits for its president, Glenn Anglin.
Under a longstanding practice rather than a written agreement, the company for 35 years paid for vacations and insurance for union presidents, the union said. The company said the benefits package was worth about $10,000 a year.
The union's lawyer, Jay Levit, said Friday he will recommend the case be appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals "because the law is not clear either way." In other states, Levit said, federal appeals courts have ruled on both sides of the issue.
Levit called the law "an anti-bribery statute," aimed at impropriety in company-union relations. But at Westvaco, he said, the benefits payments were "open and above-board and out on the table. There has been no question of impropriety."
In a hearing two weeks ago, Clinton Morse, a company lawyer, told Turk the labor law prohibits employers' payments of money to any representative of their employees.
Turk did not agree with the union's argument that Anglin is a Westvaco employee. His decision, made late Thursday, said Anglin's name is part of the data in company files and he is subject to some limited adminstrative regulation by Westvaco, but he is paid and controlled by the union and he works in union offices every day.
When Anglin's benefits were terminated, Westvaco classified him as "off work with permission," Turk said.