Executive Labor Summary March/April 2002 • The AFL-CIO’s Executive Council has proposed a per capita tax to be paid by affiliated unions beginning in July, to help fund its largest-ever mid-term election mobilization campaign. The AFL-CIO General Board, consisting of presidents of all 66 affiliated unions, will meet on May 22 to vote on the recommendation. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has made it clear that his "working families" agenda was not a priority for the Bush administration or the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. He asserts that after September 11, "workers got lip-service while the airline companies got bail-out" and that proposed worker benefits "have been blocked by Republicans who want to give more big tax breaks to business and the wealthy." • The Teamsters Union organizing and bargaining efforts and continuing strike at Overnite Transportation Company has been seriously damaged by a recent ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The full court of 11 judges has decided to order new elections at four terminals (and indirectly at seven others) where the NLRB had ordered recognition and bargaining after the Teamsters Union had lost secret ballot elections. The NLRB ruling had applied the Supreme Court’s Gissel decision, finding that where unfair labor practices are so outrageous that a new election cannot be fairly held, a bargaining remedy is appropriate. The Court majority ruled that the Board erred in finding a productivity-based wage increase in 1996 was an unfair labor practice. The increases had been rejected by the Union, but implemented by the company in all other locations. Hence, the Board’s reliance on this factor and failure to consider others -- such as the passage of time and employee and management turnover -- undermined its ruling. It is expected that the Teamsters and/or the NLRB will seek a Supreme Court review. • The Letter Carriers Union has been ordered by the NLRB to pay the attorney fees for a non-union postal employee who had been prevented by union stewards from filing a grievance. A remedy of independent representation during the grievance/arbitration proceeding was within the Board’s discretion, according to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which also rejected the Union’s argument that it could have represented the employee fairly and without bias. • A Tennessee company lacked sufficient grounds to withdraw recognition from an Iron Workers Local Union, according to an NLRB ruling confirmed by a Federal Circuit Court. A frustrated member of the Union’s bargaining committee had told the Company that "she felt the employees no longer wanted the Union to represent them." The Court agreed with the NLRB that the Company had failed to demonstrate a "genuine, reasonable uncertainty" that the Union had lost majority support that was grounded in objective considerations. The employee negotiator for the Union made the remark after two years of unsuccessful bargaining and after negotiations had "ground to a halt." The Circuit Court referenced a Supreme Court rule that a union enjoys an irrebuttable presumption of majority status for the first year, and a rebuttable presumption thereafter. Here, there was no evidence that the Union had abandoned bargaining or that a majority of the employees opposed continued representation. • Wal-Mart has secured what purports to be a nationwide injunction against union solicitation in its stores by the United Food and Commercial Workers. The UFCW "blitz" last September had union organizers enter 100 or more stores in several states to distribute literature and solicit employees. Judge Spears of the Arkansas Circuit Court made his injunction against civil and criminal trespass permanent on March 15, which he asserts is entitled to Constitutional "full faith and credit" in all 50 states. Wal-Mart is expected to file the injunction in all states, where enforcement would be in accordance with the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgment Act. Each state would then consider whether the injunction can be adopted consistent with the particular state’s law. UFCW will appeal and will assert that the injunction is only applicable in Arkansas.