Union organizing efforts at an Austin residential care facility have turned bitter.

Tuesday, September 26, 2000

Union organizing efforts at an Austin residential care facility have turned bitter.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. In a letter to the NLRB’s Eddie Clopton, union representative Jennifer Swanson summarized events leading to the local’s decision to file charges.

Swanson was petitioned by Sacred Heart Care Center workers to assist them in forming a collective bargaining unit at the care facility.

"On or about Aug. 31, the company, Sacred Heart Care Center Inc., began its campaign to discourage employee membership in UFCW Local 789," Swanson alleged. "At the captive audience meeting held at the facility on Aug. 31, employees were told they would be denied wage increases granted to them by the 2000 Minnesota State Legislature.

"While the company denied wages for the organizing workers, they granted them for those outside of the stipulated bargaining unit," Swanson alleged.

According to Swanson, she telephoned the Minnesota Department of Human Services for a copy of the salary plan required by the state of Minnesota for disbursing the Legislature-approved monies, but not such plan had been filed by Sacred Heart and, therefore, no additional monies had been released by the state.

State law mandates the 2000 increase be spent in an equal cents-per-hour increase for all employees at the facility.

"It is apparent," Swanson said, "that the company is choosing not only to misrepresent state law, but also to blame the union (by) stating ‘status quo’ during an organizing campaign."

Swanson also charged her sources at Sacred Heart Care Center told her administrator Rebecca Mathews Halverson "went further to discourage workers from supporting the union by threatening a loss of benefits if they voted in the union."

During the meeting, sources told Swanson their employer announced "if the union is in place, benefits would be up for grabs" through negotiations.

"The employer went on to say that employees won’t get the same amount of benefits with the union," Swanson alleged.

Halverson refuted Swanson’s charges that she has engaged in unfair labor practices.

Halverson said Monday that the complaint contains "serious distortions and misrepresentations of the truth and Sacred Heart is confident that the NLRB will find that the union’s charges are without merit.

"Sacred Heart also finds it unfortunate that the union was not content to make these misrepresentations only to the NLRB, but chose to involve the media as well," Halverson said.

"Whether nursing home employees at Sacred Heart will be represented by the UFCW Local 789 will be decided by those workers during a secret ballot vote scheduled for Sept. 28," Halverson said. "Sacred Heart believes that a majority of these individuals, who were present at the required meeting, will judge for themselves the truthfulness of the accusations made by Local 789 and will find it just one more reason to reject union representation."

The filing of the unfair labor practice charges against Sacred Heart Care Center does not impact an earlier request to the NLRB to schedule a special election – scheduled for Thursday by secret ballot – of the workers to determine whether the majority favors forming a union.

St. Mark’s Lutheran Home in Austin faced a similar, although not as bitter a situation, this summer, when workers there sought to form a union.

The NLRB granted an election and the overwhelming majority of St. Mark’s employees who voted favored a collective bargaining unit to represent them.