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Landmark Ruling: California Company Can’t Flee to Mexico to Avoid Union
In an unprecedented victory for union organizing, a federal judge in Los Angeles has barred a jewelry company from moving to Mexico to avoid dealing with its newly unionized workforce.
The company’s attempted relocation was announced one day after 118 minimum-wage employees at Quadrtech Corp. voted for representation by IUE-CWA.
Similar moves and threats to move have become commonplace as companies try to thwart union organizing. “The struggle for fairness at Quadrtech represents what is going on across the country and why unions are so important,” IUE-CWA President Ed Fire said.
CWA President Morton Bahr said companies get away with threats to move and other illegal tactics far too often because the courts haven’t stepped in to stop them — until now. “We are very pleased that the NLRB and the court have acted now to protect the jobs of these workers and to uphold their right to a union voice, instead of waiting until there could be no effective remedy or justice,” he said.
National Labor Relations Board attorneys, who took the Quadrtech employees’ case to court, said the ruling marks the first time a court has stopped a company from leaving the country to avoid a union.
The ruling, by U.S. District Court Judge Carlos Moreno, is a preliminary injunction. It will remain in effect pending NLRB hearings on a series of charges brought by the union, the most serious being Quadrtech owner Vladimer Reil’s plan to move the company.
In issuing his decision, Moreno found that the workers were likely to win the NLRB case, forcing Reil to stay in the country and bargain in good faith. The injunction not only halted the move but also ordered the return of two truckloads of equipment that had been shipped to Tijuana. The workers themselves tracked the cargo and reported its location.
“There is imminent danger that substantial and irreparable injury will result to the employees…to the policies of the National Labor Relations Act and to the public interest from a continuation of (Quadrtech’s) unlawful conduct,” the judge wrote.
Quadrtech’s workers, mostly Latina women, assemble earrings and ear-piercing equipment in a stifling factory where many employees stand for 10-hour shifts. A supervisor’s refusal to give an injured worker a chair was the final indignity. When workers protested, those who had been allowed chairs lost them.
A group of workers approached IUE’s “Workers Organizing Latino Force,” known as WOLF, in May. Less than two months later, workers voted for representation. IUE merged with CWA in September.
IUE organizer Jaime Martinez, who helped create WOLF, said the company responded to the organizing campaign by locking out workers for two days, publicly claiming the shutdown was a work stoppage initiated by the union. Later, managers held captive audience meetings and began making threats to move the plant.
“Those threats were not taken lightly,” Martinez said. “The company was really working them over, trying to scare them.” He said several members were fired for union activities, cases that were scheduled for trial as the CWA News went to press.
Since the union election, workers say they are being forced to work faster and are subject to arbitrary rules, such as a ban on conversation.
Worker Sonia Avalos, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, said the injunction “is a win, but we’re too tired to celebrate.”
“It’s very difficult,” she said. “We can stand it only a little while longer. What we want is that the factory stays here and they treat us like people.”
The ruling, which Quadrtech can appeal, was denounced in the business community. A spokesman for the California Manufact-urers Association told the Los Angeles Times that it was a “terrible” decision and said an employer’s motives for moving aren’t relevant. “Whatever reason he had for it, it’s his own company,” Gino DeCarlo said.
Union leaders and labor researchers hailed the ruling as a landmark.
“It’s an incredible decision,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, an expert in labor education research at Cornell University who recently published a study showing how common it is for employers to close plants or threaten to move to avoid unions.
“The courts have always weighed the employer's right to make a profit against the workers’ right to unionize,” she said. “They felt like forcing an employer to stay open or reopen infringes too much on the right to manage."
But she said Moreno ruled that the freedom of workers to associate “is a right of greater value than business decisions and profits."
“Freedom of association is an intrinsic part of our constitution but somehow, when it comes to work association, it has become devalued,” she said.
Harley Shaiken, a professor of labor and the global economy at the University of California at Berkeley, told The New York Times that the issue “isn’t the movement of a single plant, but the future of collective bargaining as a viable institutional practice.”
“If you can move a plant to avoid a union, you undermine the whole system, and if you move when you are involved in collective bargaining, you destroy the whole process,” he said.
Martinez, an international organizer for 34 years who worked with Cesar Chavez, said the workers’ victory proves Chavez’s noted words, “Si Se Puedo,” meaning, “Yes it can be done."
“When companies find that it is cheaper to violate labor law than obey it, no longer can the working men and women of America stay silent,” Martinez said.
The company’s attempted relocation was announced one day after 118 minimum-wage employees at Quadrtech Corp. voted for representation by IUE-CWA.
Similar moves and threats to move have become commonplace as companies try to thwart union organizing. “The struggle for fairness at Quadrtech represents what is going on across the country and why unions are so important,” IUE-CWA President Ed Fire said.
CWA President Morton Bahr said companies get away with threats to move and other illegal tactics far too often because the courts haven’t stepped in to stop them — until now. “We are very pleased that the NLRB and the court have acted now to protect the jobs of these workers and to uphold their right to a union voice, instead of waiting until there could be no effective remedy or justice,” he said.
National Labor Relations Board attorneys, who took the Quadrtech employees’ case to court, said the ruling marks the first time a court has stopped a company from leaving the country to avoid a union.
The ruling, by U.S. District Court Judge Carlos Moreno, is a preliminary injunction. It will remain in effect pending NLRB hearings on a series of charges brought by the union, the most serious being Quadrtech owner Vladimer Reil’s plan to move the company.
In issuing his decision, Moreno found that the workers were likely to win the NLRB case, forcing Reil to stay in the country and bargain in good faith. The injunction not only halted the move but also ordered the return of two truckloads of equipment that had been shipped to Tijuana. The workers themselves tracked the cargo and reported its location.
“There is imminent danger that substantial and irreparable injury will result to the employees…to the policies of the National Labor Relations Act and to the public interest from a continuation of (Quadrtech’s) unlawful conduct,” the judge wrote.
Quadrtech’s workers, mostly Latina women, assemble earrings and ear-piercing equipment in a stifling factory where many employees stand for 10-hour shifts. A supervisor’s refusal to give an injured worker a chair was the final indignity. When workers protested, those who had been allowed chairs lost them.
A group of workers approached IUE’s “Workers Organizing Latino Force,” known as WOLF, in May. Less than two months later, workers voted for representation. IUE merged with CWA in September.
IUE organizer Jaime Martinez, who helped create WOLF, said the company responded to the organizing campaign by locking out workers for two days, publicly claiming the shutdown was a work stoppage initiated by the union. Later, managers held captive audience meetings and began making threats to move the plant.
“Those threats were not taken lightly,” Martinez said. “The company was really working them over, trying to scare them.” He said several members were fired for union activities, cases that were scheduled for trial as the CWA News went to press.
Since the union election, workers say they are being forced to work faster and are subject to arbitrary rules, such as a ban on conversation.
Worker Sonia Avalos, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, said the injunction “is a win, but we’re too tired to celebrate.”
“It’s very difficult,” she said. “We can stand it only a little while longer. What we want is that the factory stays here and they treat us like people.”
The ruling, which Quadrtech can appeal, was denounced in the business community. A spokesman for the California Manufact-urers Association told the Los Angeles Times that it was a “terrible” decision and said an employer’s motives for moving aren’t relevant. “Whatever reason he had for it, it’s his own company,” Gino DeCarlo said.
Union leaders and labor researchers hailed the ruling as a landmark.
“It’s an incredible decision,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, an expert in labor education research at Cornell University who recently published a study showing how common it is for employers to close plants or threaten to move to avoid unions.
“The courts have always weighed the employer's right to make a profit against the workers’ right to unionize,” she said. “They felt like forcing an employer to stay open or reopen infringes too much on the right to manage."
But she said Moreno ruled that the freedom of workers to associate “is a right of greater value than business decisions and profits."
“Freedom of association is an intrinsic part of our constitution but somehow, when it comes to work association, it has become devalued,” she said.
Harley Shaiken, a professor of labor and the global economy at the University of California at Berkeley, told The New York Times that the issue “isn’t the movement of a single plant, but the future of collective bargaining as a viable institutional practice.”
“If you can move a plant to avoid a union, you undermine the whole system, and if you move when you are involved in collective bargaining, you destroy the whole process,” he said.
Martinez, an international organizer for 34 years who worked with Cesar Chavez, said the workers’ victory proves Chavez’s noted words, “Si Se Puedo,” meaning, “Yes it can be done."
“When companies find that it is cheaper to violate labor law than obey it, no longer can the working men and women of America stay silent,” Martinez said.