Divide and Conquer

The following message was mailed to the homes of all employees from the Chatsworth Facility, that was closed in January, 2006. Ed

We have heard that union supporters are putting a full court press on co-workers, including and perhaps especially those of you who had worked at the San Fernando Valley plant, to sign cards for the union. A lot of peer pressure is being brought to bear and some of you have been told that you had “better get on board before the train leaves the station.” Before you consider “getting on board” with the union, think carefully about what that means for you personally and your seniority.

As you know, historically each plant had its own seniority list. If you transferred from the Valley to the Olympic plant, for example, you went to the bottom of the seniority list. Although this was the longstanding practice, when it became apparent we would have to close the San Fernando Valley plant, management immediately rejected the use of plant specific seniority.

Given the integrated nature of day-to-day Operations functions, we considered it unfair and unreasonable to only have layoffs occur among the ranks of Valley employees. We also believed that it was unfair and unreasonable to put the remaining Valley employees at the bottom of the seniority list when they were reassigned. So we switched to using departmental seniority, which we believe is the fairest to all employees in the long run.

Although we knew that this was the only fair thing to do, we also knew that this would be extremely unpopular among certain employees, especially at the Olympic plant, where the vast majority of you went. We believed that changing seniority might be one of the things that could start another union organizing campaign; we did it anyway because it was the right thing to do.

However, many employees at the Olympic and Orange County plants have agreed that management did the only thing that was fair, even though they may have been adversely affected. Yet at the Olympic plant, and to a lesser degree at the Orange County plant, some presspersons have complained loudly about what happened and argue that the San Fernando Valley presspersons should have gone to the bottom of the pressroom seniority list.

The union’s strongest supporters, of course, have always come from the Olympic plant. One could easily conclude that if the union is voted in, some of the current, and former Olympic employees reassigned to Orange County, will have the biggest say in what the union will demand in negotiations. And, one of the things that the union could demand would be returning to plant rather than department seniority, which means you would go to the bottom of the seniority list.

It has happened elsewhere. For example, when the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch terminated its joint operating agreement with Scripps, the union put all of the presspersons who printed the Scripps’ newspaper at the bottom of the seniority list even though they were all employees of the Columbus Dispatch.

The union supporters may tell you that changing seniority is not what they want here. Maybe that’s true – or maybe it’s just a way to get you to sign a card or vote for the union. You really can’t know where the union might stand. But you know where we stand: we did what was right even though we believed that might mean another union drive.

If you have any questions about your seniority, this message or any other issue, come to us to talk about it. We’re here. Available and want to give you the facts, not fear, on these issues.

Sincerely,

I take it this was from Mark Kurtich, or Wayne (Russ) Newton?