National Labor Board Sides With Kaiser All But One Unfair Labor Practice Charge Dismissed

The National Labor Relations Board dismissed all but one of the unfair labor practice charges against Kaiser Aluminum on Friday.

A final charge, that the company underpaid Trentwood Steelworkers their September 1998 bonus, was deferred for arbitration under the old contract.

In a seven-page letter released Friday, James Scott, regional director of the NLRB’s Oakland office, concluded that Kaiser did not engage in any unlawful conduct, “bargaining or otherwise.” He declared the company’s Jan. 14 lockout legal.

The United Steelworkers have until July 30 to appeal.

The union had tried to present enough evidence to warrant holding a trial before an administrative law judge.

Jeremy Sherman, Kaiser’s chief negotiator, called Friday’s dismissal “very significant,” saying it affirmed the company’s position that the charges were without merit.

“I’m not looking for a victory over the union,” Sherman said Friday evening in a telephone interview from his home in Chicago. “I’m looking for reaching a contract with the union. If the union will return to the bargaining table and reach an agreement with us, that will be the victory for both sides.”

News of a pending dismissal had brought Sherman to Spokane to meet with company executives Thursday and early Friday.

It also brought nearly 1,500 Steelworkers and their families to a union meeting Thursday at the Greyhound Park in Post Falls. Paul Whitehead, an attorney for the Steelworkers, and District Director David Foster immediately flew to Spokane to soothe concerns and rally the troops.

“I walked in and saw a letter explaining the dismissal and that’s when I was at my lowest,” said Garry Charbronneau, a Steelworker from Rockford.

Foster and Whitehead spent nearly three hours answering questions and repeating the union’s strategy, the company’s proposal and how a corporate campaign may force Kaiser’s hand.

But with no negotiations scheduled and unemployment checks running out in less than four weeks, the Steelworkers’ mood was bleak and often contentious.

“People came in with a lot of questions as to why the initial ruling did not go our way,” union spokesman Jon Youngdahl said. “There is anxiety and concern about the end of unemployment.”

“Everybody just wants to get back to work,” said Gus Johnson, a 26-year worker at Trentwood.

Whitehead was in transit to his home office late Friday and unavailable for comment.

National and local union leaders had been confident that the NLRB would find the company had violated federal labor laws and force Kaiser to pay millions in back pay from Jan. 14. But they downplayed the setback of the actual decision.

“There’s obvious disappointment, but folks have learned from other labor struggles that the NLRB is only one part of an overall strategy in a labor dispute,” Youngdahl said.

Now the five local union presidents are arranging to tour the plants in the next week and then, through a federal mediator, schedule new meetings with the company.

Still, the gap between the two seems wider than ever.

“We’re not making progress anywhere in this,” Sherman said.

“The negotiations seem to have gone backward and not forward,” Youngdahl agreed. Last fall, the company was proposing about 100 jobs be eliminated or contracted out. That figure now is more than 700.

“As a result of the strike, we were forced to learn a lot about what was possible, and based on those experiences, we revised our proposals,” Sherman said.

He said that the Steelworkers want to talk about job reductions, but will not talk about a fundamental change in how the plants operate. Sherman said that Kaiser has had a template, a laboratory since September, in how to run the plants free of union job classifications that it considers too narrow and inefficient.

He called upon the union membership to be allowed to vote on the next proposal. Last year, the Steelworkers gave their local presidents the right to decide whether a proposal was worthy of being brought to a vote. So far no proposal has been voted upon by the full membership.

Meanwhile, the union will hold an all-union rally today outside the Mead plant beginning at 3 p.m.

Mike Kamps, a welder who has worked at Trentwood more than 10 years, missed most of the week’s events. He’s been commuting 640 miles each week, living in a Seattle motel in order to work as a metal fabricator on a seafood processing boat.

“I definitely might have to move out of the area if it keeps on going,” he said from his Post Falls home. This week he called a state senator in frustration.

“There are no skilled jobs around here. Skilled people have to leave the area to find jobs. But without them, what incentive do companies have to come here?”