Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 6, 1995 TAG: 9501060089
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
Four employees had testified by early afternoon at a National Labor Relations Board hearing about a company-made film on UMW strike tactics, anti-union literature posted at the plant and a plant manager's pre-election speech - all of which they saw as an effort to undermine union organizing last fall.
The speech by John Winske carried the implicit message that the UMW officials "were violent people and would be bad for this plant," production employee Leon Cassady testified.
The film, Cassady said, painted a harshly negative and false picture of the mine workers union. It claimed at one point that workers could be fined for attending church if they were supposed to be at a Sunday union meeting, he said.
Labor board hearing officer Norman Reese expected to conclude a two-day hearing into the union's complaint today and could rule in two weeks. At stake is the UMW's right to have a second chance to represent the 550 nylon plant employees.
DuPont predicts the federal board will uphold results of the Nov. 5 vote, which rejected the union by 294 to 218, and deny the union's request for a new election, said company attorney Alan Burton.
"I view [the complaint] as kind of sour grapes,'' Burton said.
A group of the Martinsville employees contacted the powerful 220,000-member United Mine Workers union after an in-house union had failed repeatedly since 1987 to negotiate a new labor contract with DuPont.
Despite what the UMW said was a well-received petition drive to get its name on the ballot, the union lost the election to a new-in house union that formed after the UMW campaign began.
Thursday's hearing centered on claims by the Washington, D.C.-based mine workers union that DuPont's Martinsville managers had engineered its defeat. The company is accused of threatening to close the plant if the UMW won and of going too far in its support for the new in-house union before votes were cast. The complaint also said company officials "chilled" the resolve of workers to vote freely by having managers act as observers of the election.
An employer may take sides in a union representation vote. But labor law prohibits a company from trying to sway with threats or promises how employees vote, an NLRB spokesman said.
Cassady, a 32-year nylon plant employee, said he assumed a security officer at the plant was speaking for plant management when she speculated one day outside the guard shack that DuPont would close the factory rather than wrestle with the expected stringent demands of the UMW if it were chosen to represent workers.
Burton, the company lawyer, demonstrated that the guard was technically not a manager, even though she did not belong to the bargaining unit like the majority of employees.
The company, which has recently ended a period of downsizing, admits wanting no union at all. And it admits having told employees that if they were set on unionization, the company favored election of a new in-house union that ultimately won, the Martinsville DuPont Employees Union.
by CNB