ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701070008
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: ECONOMIC FORECAST
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
Roanoke Valley unions will work at the bargaining table, in the political arena and in the courtroom this year to get more pay, benefits and rights, officials said.
As for 1996, there is little evidence that local unions made the kind of dramatic progress in organizing suggested by their national leaders' enthusiastic predictions a year ago.
But the highest ranked local labor leader remained upbeat. Walt Wise said he is pleased unions began efforts last year to register employees of Virginia Transformer Corp., a Roanoke manufacturer; Hanover Direct Inc. the valley's largest catalog merchant; and Carilion Health System, the regional operator of hospitals and medical practices.
"Even though we didn't see any successes as far as unionization of workplaces, there is a sentiment there, and that is something we can build on in the coming year," said Wise, president of the Roanoke United Central Labor Council. The council is a coalition of 80 percent of the area's union locals.
Virginia Transformer employees called off their scheduled vote to form a union last spring. The campaigns at Hanover and Carilion have not reached the voting stage and will continue this year.
Overall, unions had a 33 percent success rate registering new work forces. Unions in the Roanoke and New River valleys, Alleghany Highlands and Martinsville area won two of six organizing drives that went to a vote, according to results available late last month.
Employees of Polymer Corp. in Wytheville voted narrowly to affiliate with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union Local 3-986. Security officers who work for Wackenhut Services Inc. of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and are assigned to guard the Radford Army Ammunition Plant voted to affiliate with United Plant Guard Workers of America.
Clint Morse, a Roanoke labor lawyer who represents employers in labor cases, said he thinks unions' accomplishments locally in 1996 were meager. "Employees today are more informed consumers and they don't view for the most part that unions offer any value for the money that they charge," Morse.
Bayard Harris, another Roanoke labor lawyer who represents employers, said the trend to watch with unions nationally is "the momentum they feel from having a friendly [presidential] administration and a friendly labor relations board." Clinton nominees hold four of the five seats on the National Labor Relations Board. Clinton also can name someone to the vacant fifth seat; his choice would need Senate approval to get the job.
Unions feel the momentum at a time when they have been strengthened by mergers and are using more sophisticated organizing techniques, Harris said.
Statistics show unions remained weaker in Virginia than in the nation as a whole. According to the latest estimate, in 1995, 6.7 percent of public and private workers in Virginia belong to a union, while 14.9 percent belonged nationally, researchers at Florida State University said.
Wise listed other high points of the year for unions: Railroad employees, including from Norfolk Southern Corp., ratified contracts; union pressure helped defeat a bill in the General Assembly to subtract from worker compensation benefits the amount of pension any worker receives, as well as other so-called anti-worker measures; and the increase in the federal minimum wage to $5.15 on Sept.1,1997.
The Roanoke United Central Labor Council added affiliates from the Martinsville area, bringing the number of participating members to 11,000, Wise said. He said 39 of 49 locals in this area belong to the council.
But Wise said a planned campaign by Roanoke Valley locals to educate the public about unions and stimulate union activity had delays and budget problems. In the end, only a few ads and some signs appeared.
Bill Roop, president of the New River Valley Central Labor Council, said new employees at unionized companies tended to be signing on with those unions. His council has about 5,000 affiliated union members.
"Overall, the membership is up in most of the local unions, even though there has been a lot of downsizing and cutbacks," Roop said. "We hope to continue to grow. If any new companies are coming into the area, we hope to organize those."
This will be an active year of bargaining. Unions must renegotiate contracts with tire maker Yokohama Corp. and GE Motors and Industrial Systems in Salem, the local UPS operation and Roanoke Gas. They are among the area's largest employers.
In addition, unions said they will push for what they call worker-friendly laws in the General Assembly.
On the legal front, one union succeeded in its bid to haul to court an employer accused of interfering with organizing. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, in Landover, Md., filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Hanover Direct's Roanoke County warehouse, which the union has been trying to organize since early 1996. The NLRB's regional office in Winston-Salem, N.C., sided with the union, filed a formal complaint and ordered the company to stand trial May 27 before an administrative law judge in Roanoke for refusing to let the union show a pro-union video in its cafeteria.
As 1996 ended, just one union vote was scheduled for early in 1997. Employees will vote Thursday on whether to remove a union in place 45 years at Blue Ridge Stone Corp., which mines limestone in Blue Ridge.
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