August 23, 1999
Corporations Try to Bar Use of E-Mail by Unions
By NOAM S. COHEN
he organizing drive among the engineers at the Pratt & Whitney
factory in Palm Beach, Fla., was a home-grown affair. The
leadership of the aspiring union, the Florida Professional Association, knew it had a difficult job, and in an early appeal
stressed that "just because we are seeking change doesn't mean
we're radicals."
While they may not have been radicals, they did employ a novel
tactic: They sent their appeals to all of the factory's 2,000
engineers at their company e-mail addresses.
|
Susan Greenwood for The New York Times
|
Current and former employees of Pratt & Whitney gather outside the company's main gate in Palm Beach, Fla. From left: Bob Ahbol, Kenneth Coolidge, Zachary Waltz, Carol Rinaldi and Brian Waldron.
|
"We got away with about 10" of the mass mailings, said Kenneth
Coolidge, the union treasurer, "before the company found out and
objected." Those objections led to the suspension of Coolidge and
the union's president, Brian Waldron, for using the company's
e-mail system for what was deemed personal business.
Last month, more than two years after the suspensions, the union
in Florida agreed to withdraw a complaint accusing Pratt & Whitney
of using unfair labor practices in return for the company's pledge
to allow the limited use of its system for such e-mail in the
future. And both sides along the labor-management divide are
looking to this settlement for signs of how friendly an environment
cyberspace -- particularly the cyberspace surrounding corporate
offices and factories -- will be for the labor movement.
While some union officials have been emboldened by the
settlement, others say they will tread lightly until there is a
greater consensus about the rules for contacting employees via
corporate e-mail addresses. And all the while, companies are
fighting to keep their systems off-limits.
E-mail has become common in many workplaces that unions are
eager to organize, including those at software companies and in
other high-technology industries. And unions have found it an
unusually effective organizing tool, one that combines the intimacy
of a conversation, the efficiency of mass-produced leaflets and the
precision of delivery by mail to work forces that are often widely
dispersed.
"It saves time, it saves money," said Michael Blain of the
Washington Alliance of Technical Workers, or WASHTECH, an affiliate
of the Communication Workers of America that is trying to organize
software workers in the state of Washington. "We can reach 1,300
people by just hitting 'send."'
The union leaders at Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United
Technologies Corp., who ultimately failed in their drive to
organize the Palm Beach plant, said they had used e-mail to respond
quickly to management statements. "If you get the information out
quick, the bureaucracy has to be more accountable," Coolidge said.
Companies may find it galling to see unions capitalize on
corporate e-mail systems to organize workers. When nonemployees
send e-mail to organize, some say, that should be considered
trespass, and when employees receive union e-mail at work, it will
invariably be read on company time, a practice that they say labor
law should prohibit.
"E-mail from unions does interfere with employers' expectation
that work time is for work," said Frank Morris, a lawyer who
represents management in labor disputes. "The unions are trying to
make extraordinary use of a tool that didn't exist until recently
for their benefit."
Companies also contend that any mass e-mailing, even if about
work conditions or union organizing, is an intrusion comparable to
the "spamming" done by commercial outfits. Intel recently
persuaded a California Superior Court judge to order a former
employee, Ken Hamidi, to stop sending e-mail messages to its
employees by invoking common law about trespass. (Hamidi has
appealed the ruling.) According to court papers, Hamidi sent more
than 30,000 e-mail messages about the company's employment policies
in six bursts between 1996 and 1998 while avoiding the company's
efforts to thwart him.
The California court's decision has angered free-speech
advocates who say e-mail is useful precisely because it is not
trespassing.
"E-mail is potentially a solution to a previously insoluble
dilemma," said Lewis Maltby of the American Civil Liberties Union's employment rights office. "Employees have a right to
organize and employers don't have to allow trespassers. But now
employees have a way of learning about unions without trespassing
on the employers' property."
Some organizers are eager to test how far they can go. "We have
e-mailed, and thought about using e-mail in organizing drives,"
said George Kohl, research director for the Communications Workers
of America. "But the context we work in is that we don't own" the
company's e-mail system.
Tellingly, the union did not contact anyone at a corporate
e-mail address during its successful campaign this month to
organize 10,000 passenger service employees of US Airways Group
Inc. Instead, it relied on a bulletin board at the union Web site,
Candice Johnson, a spokeswoman, said. "We don't use corporate
e-mail," Ms. Johnson said. "We just think there are better ways
to do it without the risk."
Russ Bryant for The New York Times
|
Frank Morris Jr., a lawyer, says union E-mail is an interference.
|
|
A more common use of e-mail at the Communications Workers of
America, said Suman Ray, a research economist there, is to build up
a network among people already committed to the cause. That way
there is no concern of antagonizing noncooperative employees who
might inform management about the unsolicited messages.
At Microsoft Corp., for example, WASHTECH organizers have
collected a list of 1,300 supporters, including nearly 200 people
who gave Microsoft e-mail addresses. (While the other 1,100
presumably work at Microsoft and other software companies in the
area, organizers said, most gave home e-mail addresses.) "We don't
worry about sending to Microsoft addresses," Blain said, although
he added that he thought the company had the ability to block out
any messages coming from WASHTECH.
Referring to the National Labor Relations Board, he added,
"That's not the direction the NLRB is heading, and if Microsoft
were to discriminate, that is illegal." A Microsoft spokesman
declined to comment on the company's policy.
Even at unionized companies, there are no clear guidelines for
union access to corporate e-mail systems; increasingly it is
becoming another bargaining issue.
A shop steward of the Seattle Professional Engineering Employees Association, which represents engineers and technical workers at
Boeing Co. of Seattle, was recently given a written warning for
sending a message to 80 or so workers about "a workplace issue at
that location," said Phyllis Rogers, the union's general counsel.
She said the union understood that such communication would be
permitted if directed at fewer than 200 people.
Ms. Rogers said the union, which represents 25,000 professional
workers, mainly in the Puget Sound area, had formed a negotiating
committee to address the issue. The union's current contract
expires on Dec. 1.
A Boeing spokeswoman, Amanda Landers, would not discuss the
specific dispute but said that in general, Boeing allowed
nonbusiness e-mail only for "incidental, personal use." Ms.
Rogers, the union lawyer, said, "We are offended that our
correspondence should be considered the same as any other e-mails,
because we have a legal relationship with the company."
In the Pratt & Whitney case, the company conceded in an e-mail
dated July 6 that employees can use e-mail to "initiate a response
or reciprocal discussion, relating to terms and conditions of
employment, and the employee's interest in self-organization" as
long as the use was "occasional, incidental and infrequent." But
since that agreement was made without a ruling from the NLRB, which
referees union organizing, it is not precedent-setting.
"These cases are bubbling up," said Fred Feinstein, the
general counsel for the labor relations board, whose office decides
whether to file complaints against companies for unfair labor
practices. In a recent report summarizing important issues coming
before the board, Feinstein made it clear that he considered the
right to use e-mail to be protected under the National Labor
Relations Act.
Feinstein said he believed that in at least some cases, e-mail
is best compared to "solicitation," one-on-one conversation
typically permitted in factories during work breaks anywhere on
company property, instead of "distribution" of literature, which
can typically be more closely regulated. (Of course, this presumes
that a union's e-mail message would be read by workers during a
work break.)
Morris, the management lawyer, objected to this reasoning and
said unions "have had the benefit of a Clinton-appointed NLRB that
has not taken into account the costs." He said it was foolish to
apply Industrial Age examples to new technologies and said
congressional legislation might be the best way to devise rules to
protect companies.
Related Sites
These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.
