Desertification of the Union at Los Angeles Times

From: Adam N. Stern, Esq.

To all Los Angeles Times Employees represented by GCIU Local 140-N

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

I have had the honor of representing GCIU 140-N since shortly after you organized a union and secured your first contract.

Since that time, I’ve had a front-row seat to the actions and attitudes of your employer. In the more than twenty years that I have represented local unions, I have never dealt with a more mean-spirited anti-union employer. In my view, employees need a union to counterbalance the legal and economic power of employers and never more than at the Los Angeles Times.

After some employees files a petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to decertify the Union as the exclusive bargaining representative, the Union asked me to set out the legal ramifications associated with decertifying your Union.

First, if the Union is decertified, the Collective Bargaining Agreement will immediately become null and void and the Employer will have no legal obligation to follow any portion of the contract in the future. Should the employees vote to decertify the Union, the Employer will be free to maintain any term and condition of employment that it chooses, as long as it does not violate some law like minimum wage, maximum work hour rules, and the like. Nothing in the law would prevent the Employer from converting full-time employees into part-time employees, eliminating health insurance, establishing any shift it cares to, adopting any and all work rules and disciplining and/or terminating employees without cause. In this regard, under California law, all employees employed in the state of California are presumed to be at-will employees. At-will employees can be terminated at any time for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. Hence, the Employer, for example, could decide to terminate all employees who are late to work, even by so much as one second. Unless the Employer somehow managed to violate some law in so doing, the employees would be absolutely powerless to contest such strict rules.

The concept of job seniority does not exist in either California or federal law. Rather, seniority is a concept, which is created in a contract or adopted by an employer because it wishes to do so. No rule of law requires your employer to follow any idea of seniority with respect to any term or condition of employment. Therefore, should the employees decertify, the senority protections in your Collective Bargaining Agreement would evaporate. The Employer would be free to lay off anybody it wishes regardless of the amount of time such as employee worked for the Employer. The assignment of shifts, selection of vacation time, and days off would not be controlled by any idea of seniority, but rather the Employer could simply do whatever it pleases.

The current Collective Bargaining Agreement also contains a grievance and arbitration procedure, which enables any represented employee to file a grievance when he or she believes the Employer, has violated some provision of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Should the Union be decertified, the grievance and arbitration procedures in the Collective Bargaining Agreement would disappear along with the rest of the contract. Thereafter, if an employee believed that the Employer was mistreating an employee, violating its own rules or virtually any other complaint and employee may have, it could not be grieved, and the Employer would never be obligated to arbitrate any dispute. Instead, the employee would have to find an attorney, who in turn would have to find some law that the Employer violated, and file a lawsuit. Normally, the losing party to a lawsuit is required to pay costs associated with that lawsuit (usually excluding attorney fees) to the party that wins. Most employees whose rights are violated never sue their Employer, because there are typically very short time limits involved, they cannot afford to hire an attorney, they are unaware of their rights, or they believe that their employer with its team of attorneys will drag out the case, increase the cost, and endlessly delay any hope the employee has of finding justice. For these reasons, historically, individual employees attempting to bring some sort of change to their workplace rarely succeed in doing so by filing a lawsuit.

I hope that you will consider the facts of union representation for yourself and make your decision on how to vote in any upcoming election based upon your needs and that of your family. The Employer can promise you the moon, but if they are unwilling to put any promises in writing and sign them, no such promise would ever be enforceable. Rather, you would just have to trust them.

Very truly yours,
Adam N. Stern, Esq.