ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604120037
SECTION: 3 BUSINESS EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: CURT ANDERSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sixty years ago, Congress acted to prevent companies from blocking unions by setting up sham ``worker committees,'' whose allegiance was not at all with the workers.
Now, the Republican majority in Congress wants to change the National Labor Relations Act to enable company management to form such committees, which deal with issues ranging from plant safety to employee health plans.
But labor unions, backed by most Democrats, contend the proposal would undermine their ability to organize and would return to companies a power that was abolished in the 1930s.
In the thick of this fight is Efco Corp. of Monett, Mo., a maker of aluminum windows, doors and storefronts that employs about 1,200 people in the southwestern part of the state.
Efco's chief executive officer, Chris Fuldner, in 1992 formed four committees of employees dealing with safety, policies such as smoking and dress codes, worker suggestions and employee benefits. They met on company time, on company property, usually with a member of management on hand.
A year earlier, the International Brotherhood of Carpenters had begun an organizing drive at Efco. The union, which had previously represented the employees from 1963 until 1972, complained to the National Labor Relations Board.
In March of 1995, an administrative law judge sided with the union, ruling that the four committees were dominated by the company and, thus, violated fair labor standards. The full NLRB has yet to issue a final ruling.
The GOP-led Congress, however, may step in. The House last fall passed a bill legalizing such committees and Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., is pushing a companion measure in the Senate. The legislation is known as the TEAM act.
Fuldner, in testimony before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee chaired by Kassebaum, insisted he was not out to stop union activity. Fuldner said the law is unfair because it shuts out non-union employees from any type of worker-management cooperation.
``The NLRB has put government-issue tape over our employees' mouths and surplus cotton in their ears just because they don't belong to some union,'' Fuldner said.
His workers, Fuldner added, did not rush to join the carpenters' union.
``Our employees had a choice. They exercised their choice and made a decision,'' he said.
Advocates of the bill like Kassebaum and Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., contend that management-worker relationships are different in the 1990s than a half-century ago. Workers are allowed more input and decision-making authority over their jobs, wages and benefits, they say.
``I really find it hard to understand why this is such a problem,'' Kassebaum said. ``For so long, we felt we had to be so regimented and rigid. It just won't work in the future.''
Ashcroft said government's mission should be to enable companies and workers to ``reach their highest potential.''
``For government to prohibit workplace cooperation and erect barriers to opportunity is for government to stand on its head,'' Ashcroft said.
Opposition to the bill breaks down along party lines, with Democrats solidly against.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said the Efco situation is precisely what the 1935 labor laws were enacted to stop. Such employee committees, in Kennedy's view, function as management rubber-stamps and are not independent voices for workers.
``The most fundamental principle of the current law is that employees should have full, free, and fair choice as to whether they should be represented by a union and who that representative should be,'' Kennedy said.
Labor unions argue that they are not against worker-management cooperation, that they do not expect workers to merely do their jobs and ``check their brains at the workplace door,'' in the words of AFL-CIO general counsel Jonathan P. Hyatt.
The question raised by the TEAM Act, he said, is this: ``Why should those who speak for the employees be under the thumb of management?''
The narrow margin by which the measure passed the House makes its future uncertain in the Senate, where opponents can use the rules to delay it. But Kassebaum, who is retiring after this year, has made the bill one of her top priorities for 1996.
``If we are to remain globally competitive, we must give our workers the tools they need to do the job,'' she said.
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Efco Corp.'s chief executive officer, Chris Fuldner,by CNBbelieves the law is unfair because it shuts out non-union employees
from any type of worker-management cooperation.