ON UNION-BUSTING ACCUSATIONS AT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL:
EDITORIAL NOTE: Below is a message from the Amnesty International Board
Chair responding to a note I forwarded about accusations of
union busting at AI offices. I have no personal knowledge of exactly what
happened in the union campaign, but I find the comments below as
disturbing as the original accusations.
In his note, Mr. Winston not only defends his own actions but
defends anti-union legislation that strips many workers of their right to
organize--a disturbing position for any leader of a human rights
organization. For people's information, the exclusion of a broad range of
supervisory employees from the right to organize in unions dates from the
anti-union 1947 Taft-Hartley Law which which in large measure crippled the
US labor movement in this country. It is Orwellian for Mr. Winston to
argue that "the law is written as it is to protect the interests of non-
supervisory employees." The exclusion of supervisory employees and the
whole legal delays in employers using such exclusions to delay votes and
intimidate employees are key facets of why unionization has become so hard
in this county.
Again, it is an abomination for a leader of a human rights
organization to justify such anti-union laws that strip large number of
employees of rights.
One final note; while I have no personal knowledge of this case, I
personally worked at a fundraising firm back in 1989-90 hired by AI (among
other groups) to do fundraising. WHen we sought to organize a union,
similar union-busting attacks using intimidation of supervisors was used
to stop the union drive.
I am saddened that a group I have supported in the past, like AI
would defend right-wing anti-union laws in this country.
--Nathan Newman, moderator
p.s. If you have a response for AI, please send all mail to Rena Margulis
who is fielding e-mail for the organization. Send e-mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 01:08:33-0800
From: Rena Margulis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Nathan Newman<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Andy English <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: From Mort Winston, AIUSA Board Chair
Dear Mr. Newman and Mr. English--
Your e-mail, which forwarded Nate Stone's false and damaging
allegations about Amnesty International USA, has in turn been forwarded
to me.
In the interest of fairness, I most strongly urge you to forward the
following message to all those correspondents to whom you forwarded Mr.
Stone's message. I further ask that if any of them forwarded Mr.
Stone's earlier message, that the following continue to be forwarded to
the final recipients.
Amnesty International, winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Peace for its
human rights work, supports the right of workers to unionize under the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. AIUSA has been the victim of a
monstrous lie, and I appreciate your willingness to put an end to it.
Thank you,
Rena Margulis
AIUSA Deputy Secretary
-----
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996
FROM: Mort Winston
Chair, AIUSA Board of Directors
TO: Mr. Nathaniel A. Stone
message of October 25, 1995
RE: AIUSA Labor Relations
Dear Mr. Stone,
I was greatly disturbed to read the memo you sent to
thirty-eight people on 25 October 1996 about unionization
at AIUSA. That memo contains very serious errors in fact
and implication. I don't know who your source of
information was, and I don't want to know. But whoever
it was has misled you. You, in turn, by distributing
unsubstantiated allegations, have done your
correspondents, and potentially AIUSA, a very grave
disservice. As someone who does in fact know what
happened, allow me to set the record straight.
In July 1996 several members of AIUSA's staff
calling themselves "The AIUSA Organizing Committee" (not
90 as stated in your letter) circulated a memo in which
they asked their fellow members of the staff to consider
affiliating with Local 1180 of the Communication Workers
of America (CWA). Over the next several weeks, members
of AIUSA's staff were asked to sign cards indicating
whether or not they wished to hold a union certification
election under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in
order to determine whether or not there would be an
election to decide whether CWA Local 1180 would become
the collective bargaining agent for AIUSA's employees.
On 21 August 1996 AIUSA's senior management was
notified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
that a sufficient number of employees (at least 30%) had
returned cards indicating that they did wish a
certification election for CWA 1180 to be held. The next
step in the process would involve a National Labor
Relations Board hearing to determine the appropriate
bargaining unit. AIUSA did engage the services of a
well-respected lawyer, Kay Hodge, who specializes in
labor relations, to represent AIUSA. Ms. Hodge is by no
mean a "union-busting lawyer" as you allege. She had
represented both workers and management during her career
and has a distinguished career in non-profit
organizations in her home state of Massachusetts. Ms.
Hodge agreed to represent AIUSA at a reduced rate.
The NLRB mandated hearing began on September 6,
1996. Under NLRB rules managers and supervisors as well
as confidential employees cannot be part of the
bargaining unit. In particular, section 2, paragraph 11
of the National Labor Relations Act defines a
"supervisor" as:
"[a]ny individual having the authority, in the interest
of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off,
recall, promote, discharge, assign reward, or discipline
other employees, or responsibly direct them, or to adjust
their grievances, or effectively to recommend such
action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise
of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical
nature, but requires the use of independent judgment."
You allege that AIUSA's lawyer "excluded 30 of the
original 90 workers from the bargaining unit." Neither
lawyers for the union nor lawyers for management at such
hearings have the authority to do any such thing. The
judge of the hearing board decided who was to be regarded
as a member of the bargaining unit after hearing
arguments and evidence presented by both of the lawyers.
In this case, the TWO lawyers reached an agreement as to
who was to be in the bargaining unit and the judge of the
hearing board agreed. The judge of the hearing board
also agreed that (8) employees were considered
confidential and would also be excluded under the terms
of the National Labor Relations Act from the bargaining
unit. AIUSA did not make this law. In fact, the law is
written as it is to protect the interests of non-
supervisory employees; having supervisors in the
bargaining unit would clearly be a conflict of interest.
The judge of the hearing board also ruled that of the
remaining AIUSA employees (26) were "professionals" under
the terms of the NLRA, and (27) more were "non-
professionals." You will note that the numbers listed
add up to 81, not 90. This is because the union proposed
only to represent full-time AIUSA staff members.
In your memo you allege that the unionization effort
has been kept a secret by the Board and staff. That is
demonstrably false. The AIUSA union election that was
scheduled for October 30 was announced in the Summary
Board Minutes that already have been distributed to every
AIUSA local group with the November Monthly Mailing. The
Summary Board Minutes will also be distributed to every
student group with the November/December SAY Mailing.
Those minutes were also posted electronically to the
PeaceNet conference aiusa.policy, and available to
volunteers and staff, on October 5. On October 7, the
Board's position on AIUSA unionization was posted for
volunteers to see on aiusa.policy. As some volunteers do
not have access to aiusa.policy, here is an excerpt from
that posting for you and your correspondents to see.
"AIUSA and Local 1180 of the Communications Workers of
America have agreed to have the National Labor Relations
Board conduct a secret ballot election to determine
whether the union will represent the professional and/or
non-professional employees of AIUSA. That election will
take place on October 30, 1996, and ballots will be
counted at AIUSA's New York office on November 6.
AIUSA's commitment to ensuring that the election is free
and fair is set forth in the following resolutions.
{The following are motions passed by the AIUSA Board of
Directors.}
1996M4-GF-1: UNION I. The AIUSA Board affirms the right
of AIUSA employees to choose to unionize or not to
unionize under the National Labor Relations Act and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
1996M4-GF-2: UNION II. The AIUSA Board affirms the
right of Senior Managers to express their individual
opinions on the current unionization efforts within
AIUSA.
1996M4-GF-3: UNION III. No group(s) of AIUSA employees
will be disadvantaged on account of the decision by one
or more groups of AIUSA employees to be represented by a
union or not to be represented by a union. "
As you can see, there was NO internal "gag order"
imposed by AIUSA management or the Board. Therefore you
can only imagine my shock and anger when you stated that
AIUSA staff have been threatened with being FIRED for
talking about the fact that AIUSA staff have been
considering unionization with persons outside of the
AIUSA staff. Had you bothered to contact me or any other
Board member or any of the senior managers of AIUSA, you
would have learned that this allegation was false.
Instead, you repeated someone else's malicious lies to a
wide list of AIUSA members and urged them to further
disseminate those lies.
Mr. Stone, you then state that "AIUSA's insurance
plan won't cover unionized employees." This is such
nonsense that I barely know how to respond to it. I am
myself a union member. I have been a union member for
the past seventeen years. Among other things, unions
fight for better benefits, including health insurance
benefits, for the workers they represent in collective
bargaining negotiations. One of the reasons why people
join unions is that they think that having a union will
enable them to secure better benefits of this kind.
AIUSA's present health insurance plan covers our
employees. Any subsequent plan would also do so whether
AIUSA employees form a union or not.
Finally, here is the current status of the
situation, and again, it is no secret. The AIUSA staff
did vote 40 to 0 with 8 abstentions to withdraw the
petition for a union certification election scheduled for
October 30, 1996. We heard from the NLRB on October 25,
1996 (the same day you sent out your memo) that they had
received and certified that ballot and have with the
agreement of CWA Local 1180 canceled the union
certification election. The decision to withdraw the
petition was one which the staff of AIUSA who were
members of the bargaining unit took on their own
initiative. To suggest otherwise is an insult to AIUSA's
employees. There was absolutely no direction, or even
suggestion by the Board or senior management of AIUSA
that they do this. There was, I repeat in the most
emphatic terms, never any threat real or implied against
any member of the AIUSA staff that their jobs would be in
jeopardy if they voted for or against the union or if
they discussed the unionization efforts with anyone other
than staff. Such threats would have violated the
National Labor Relations Act and would have exposed AIUSA
to an unfair labor practices suit. It would also be
against the letter and spirit of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, a document which I and every
other member of the Board and management of AIUSA hold
dear.
Mr. Stone, you had the opportunity to check out the
information you had, and you chose not to do so. In
circulating a memo full of demonstrable falsehoods via e-
mail, and in urging your correspondents to spread those
falsehoods, you have acted extremely irresponsibly, in a
way that potentially could damage AIUSA's hard-won
reputation. If you or anyone you have copied has
forwarded your memo to any other individuals, I strongly
urge that you forward this memo as well. And if any of
you have posted that memo to any web sites, please delete
it. In the future, when any of you hear malicious rumors
about AIUSA, check with me first before spreading them.
It is the responsible thing to do. It is what someone
would do who values the work that AIUSA can accomplish to
end imprisonment, torture, and death--work that AIUSA can
accomplish only by virtue of its good name.
Mr. Stone, you close your memo by striking a most
self-righteous tone, suggesting that you are exposing
nefarious doings within AIUSA to its membership. On the
contrary, I don't know that I have ever encountered such
a shameful and irresponsible letter in the twenty years I
have been associated with AIUSA. I believe that you owe
me, and every member of AIUSA's Board, management and
staff, a retraction and an apology.
Yours Sincerely,
Morton E. Winston
Chair, Board of Directors
Amnesty International USA
