Union Says Farm Board Aids Growers

David Stirling, general counsel of the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board, has dramatically reduced the agency’s huge backlog of cases involving farm workers’ charges that employers have been guilty of unfair labor practices.

On the surface, that might seem to be good news for farm workers and Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers of America. But it isn’t.

True, the union has bitterly accused Stirling, who was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian, of simply ignoring most of the workers’ charges. And the union has said the recent record backlog of nearly 1,200 unprocessed cases indicated that Stirling is primarily interested in helping growers, not workers.

The unions and other critics of Stirling also said the backlog was further proof of their contention that Deukmejian’s drastic budget cuts in the farm labor board’s budget impaired the board.

Lately, however, Stirling has been moving swiftly to reduce the backlog. By cutting it almost in half, it would seem that Stirling has responded to the union’s complaint.

Investigators Laid Off

But Ira Gottlieb, an attorney for the farm workers union, says the situation now is worse than ever for the workers. He contended that, by seldom taking action on cases that were investigated by his staff, Stirling let the charges pile up. Making matters worse, Gottlieb said, is the fact that many of the investigators Stirling laid off as a result of budget cutbacks were among the most efficient and that the remaining staff can’t even get to many cases.

To reduce the backlog, the union attorney said, “Stirling simply dropped the charges by workers on a wholesale basis, without any kind of thorough investigation. That only helps growers, not farm workers, who can no longer rely on the law that was enacted to help protect them against abuses by their employers.”

Both Stirling and Deukmejian have said repeatedly that the farm labor board and its general counsels in the past were biased against growers and that they wanted the agency to be neutral. Stirling insists that he is working toward that goal and that workers’ charges that have been dropped were without merit and didn’t justify prosecution.

Wayne Smith, his chief deputy, insists that Stirling didn’t recklessly drop charges.

“In every instance, we made phone calls or sent letters to workers or the union, giving them from two weeks to two months to produce evidence to substantiate their charges. When they refused or were unable to do so, we dismissed the charges,” Smith said.

Dramatic Changes

And Smith has said the union frequently brings frivolous charges as part of its organizing tactics.

The union counters that, as spokesman Roberto De La Cruz put it, “the truth is that Stirling is ruthlessly dismissing 30 to 40 cases at a time without any serious investigations of them. He is just doing a job for the growers and not acting as a prosecutor of workers’ charges.”

Stirling’s actions have resulted in some other dramatic changes in statistics that trouble the union.

His predecessors in the general counsel job generally dismissed about 40% of the cases presented to them. They took action against growers in another 40%. The remaining charges were either withdrawn by the workers or settled without any action by the agency.

But that pattern has changed. Agricultural Labor Relations Board reports show that Stirling is dismissing 80% or more of all charges brought by workers and prosecuting only 10% of them, with the rest being settled or withdrawn.

It is these figures, the union says, and not the reduction in the backlog of workers’ charges, that bear out its charge against Stirling.

The liberal members of the farm labor board, all but one of whom are appointees of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., have had little effect on Stirling’s actions. Here’s why: Stirling and his staff investigate charges of illegal acts in farm labor cases and decide which cases to prosecute. Those cases then go before the five board members, who act as judges. But if he doesn’t bring many cases before the board, the board doesn’t have many cases to decide. And that, of course, suits the growers.

Not There Yet

Two unions are claiming substantial successes in an unusual organizing drive among employees of Pasadena-based Beverly Enterprises Inc., a nationwide operator of nursing homes. However, while the unions have won 70% of the union representation elections held in recent months at 83 Beverly-owned facilities, they’ve got a long way to go.

Beverly owns or controls more than 800 facilities in 44 states and has an estimated 60,000 employees. The recent elections bring the total number of Beverly facilities with union representation to only 88.

The climate for union organizing at Beverly is not nearly as volatile as it was less than a year ago, when the company was engaged in an all-out attempt to keep workers from joining the unions and the unions were charging that Beverly was a “cheap employer that . . . provided dangerously poor treatment of its nursing-home patients.”

The union was also waging a “corporate campaign” against Beverly, trying to persuade other corporations that had dealings with the company to pressure it into ending its hard-line anti-union battles.

Those harsh fights were called off last March with a precedent-setting agreement that the unions would stop their massive public attacks against the company in return for Beverly moderating its efforts to keep the unions out.

Last week, as part of that peace treaty, meetings were held by officers from the company and the two unions, the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Service Employees International Union.

The meetings were designed to work out further ground rules for conducting more peaceful elections and for settling contracts at facilities where workers have already voted for union representation.

But it still isn’t exactly a love-fest.

The company still argues that unions are not needed at Beverly, that they are led by “outsiders” who will not really help workers and that the unions’ criticisms of the company are mostly a cover-up for their failure to make more progress in organizing.

Richard Perry, an officer of the United Food and Commercial Workers, said the company is “still putting up a fight against unionization. But they’re doing it in what might be called a positive way, giving their position without any dirty, gutter-type mudslinging used by some union-busting companies.”

However, recent comments by John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees International Union, don’t seem to comply with the spirit of last year’s treaty, which said, in part, that “both labor and management are committed to providing quality health care for residents and dignity and decent standards for employees.”

Sweeney said the other day that Beverly workers are turning to the unions because spending on patient care is inadequate, working conditions are unfair and administrative expenses are far above average.

Beverly management denies the union’s charges, saying that it pays workers at or above the industry average and that, generally, its patient care is as good as or better than that provided by the rest of the nursing-home industry.

It is too soon to say whether the peace treaty and the cooperation between unions will help them make any significant inroads in the largely unorganized nursing-home industry.

The industry is still low paying, with most workers earning only the $3.35 minimum wage or slightly more, and so is a likely target for organizers.

But, while the unions’ recent election victories at Beverly may indicate a trend, union leaders acknowledge, as Perry put it, that “we must and will think in long-range terms. We don’t expect any major, quick success at Beverly or in the industry as a whole.”