Video Store Files Labor Complaint Over Pickets

A Los Angeles audio-video store chain has filed a federal unfair labor charge against the union that Wednesday picketed a major San Fernando Valley investor, as well as the home of the nephew of the late Walt Disney.

Show Industries Inc., owner of the Music Plus chain, has charged in a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board that about 25 Music Plus warehouse workers violated federal labor law when they directed their picketing at the Burbank office of Shamrock Holdings Inc., a major investor in Show, said Michael Sitrick, a Show spokesman.

Members of Teamsters Local 598 also picketed the North Hollywood house of Roy E. Disney, Shamrock’s chairman of the board.

Show argued in its NLRB complaint that the workers, by picketing Shamrock instead of Show, violated national labor law, Sitrick said. Show, not Shamrock, determines the terms of the workers’ employment, Sitrick said.

The picketers said they were protesting an earlier move by the company to challenge their vote to form a union. The warehouse workers voted in November to form a bargaining unit under Local 598, but Show has complained to the NLRB that the election was faulty.