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“THE SPRINT--LA CONEXION FAMILIAR AFFAIR: JUSTICE DELAYED, AND DELAYED AGAIN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E236-E237 on Feb. 12, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE SPRINT--LA CONEXION FAMILIAR AFFAIR: JUSTICE DELAYED, AND DELAYED
AGAIN
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HON. TOM LANTOS
of california
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, February 12, 1997
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, almost 3 years ago, on July 14, 1994, a great injustice was committed by one of the most powerful corporations in America--Sprint--against some of the least powerful among us. A union representation election was underway at a Sprint subsidiary which employed 177 Hispanic telemarketers who sold Sprint's long distance services to Spanish-speaking customers. Nearly all the workers at the San Francisco Sprint subsidiary, known as La Conexion Familiar ``The Family Connection'' [LCF], were women who had immigrated to the United States from Mexico and Central and South America. Many of them spoke only Spanish, which was no handicap in their specialized marketing jobs.
When it became clear to Sprint that the La Conexion Familiar workers would vote to be represented by the Communications Workers of America, Sprint suddenly shut the office--just 8 days before their union election. The announcement was made over the PA system during the workday, and the workers were gathered together to be searched by guards and sent out the door. The women were so shocked and upset that paramedics had to be called to the scene, and one worker was even admitted to a hospital.
The dreams of these workers were shattered and their jobs were summarily eliminated, simply because they wanted a union, and because they believed that in the United States, our labor laws would guarantee workplace democracy and the right to organize. One young woman described her ordeal this way at a public hearing on the shutdown held last year in San Francisco: ``For me, everything fell apart that day. I couldn't face being out of work. I started abusing alcohol. I was so depressed. I fought with my fiance and I yelled at my children. After 2 years, I have another job now, but my experience at Sprint changed everything for me. I will always carry around the fear that I'll suddenly be fired for no reason.''
Mr. Speaker, more than 2\1/2\ years later, the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] finally declared that the LCF closing was an illegal action and ordered Sprint to rehire the workers to comparable jobs with full back pay. Sprint immediately appealed the decision. It is expected that it will take between 1 and 2 years for the NLRB to hear the appeal and issue a final ruling. Of course, pending the appeal, none of the former LCF workers will receive the back pay or the jobs to which they are entitled according to the NLRB ruling. By dragging out this case and refusing to take responsibility for its actions, Sprint adds another chapter in a long and unfortunate tale of abuses against the LCF workers.
It was Sprint's discriminatory treatment of the LCF workers, along with sweatshop working conditions, that first drove the workers to try to seek representation. This Hispanic LCF workers were kept in a second-class status at Sprint--earning $7 an hour as compared to $11 an hour for regular Sprint telemarketers. The payment of commissions was arbitrary and discriminatory, and the workers complained. And Sprint managers restricted their visits to the bathroom, telling the workers to drink less water so they wouldn't have to go as frequently. When the workers started organizing for union representation, Sprint managers engaged in such blatantly illegal behavior to harass and intimidate union supporters that even the NLRB's investigators--investigators who have seen it all--expressed shock when they later reviewed the evidence.
During the long and drawn out legal proceedings in this case, the NLRB proved--and Sprint ultimately admitted to--scores of charges of illegal threats to close the office if workers voted for a union, of coercing workers to spy on other workers, and of interrogating and browbeating union supporters. Sprint's treatment of the LCF workers has been condemned by the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, by dozens of my colleagues in the Congress, including the Hispanic caucus, and by government and labor officials in Mexico and Canada as well as in Germany, where Sprint is involved in a partnership with Deutsche Telekom.
Mr. Speaker, through its action, Sprint has gained itself an international reputation as a violator of our Nation's labor laws. Sprint should know that pursuing endless legal appeals is an unacceptable business practice. Unfortunately, this is a trend that is growing. I would like to include in the Record for the benefit of my colleagues a column by the distinguished president of the Communications Workers of America [CWA], Morton Bahr, which was published in the CWA News of February 1997. President Bahr's column, entitled ``Breaking the Law, Business as Usual,'' provides documentation of increasing labor law violations--specifically the growing use of plant closing threats--by American corporations to defeat union organizing drives.
The column follows:
Breaking the Law, Business as Usual
(By Morton Bahr)
As philosophers and pundits ponder the breakdown of morality, social values and respect for law and order in America, maybe they should look at the example being set by elements of corporate America, such as the Sprint Corp.
The workers at Spring/La Conexion Familiar in San Francisco were determined to organize a union. Working in what came to be exposed as an ``electronic sweatshop,'' these Spanish-language telemarketing workers were so determined, in fact, to change their conditions that they were unfazed by Sprint's fierce, and illegal, campaign of threats and intimidation.
Their support for the union seemingly only grew stronger as Sprint's management team stepped up its campaign of illegal coercion. Finally, Sprint did the only thing it could do to crush the first incursion by a union in its long distance operations. It simply shut the doors at La Conexion Familiar on July 14, 1994, eight days before the union representation election.
About two-and-a-half years later, this past December 27th, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the closing violated federal law and ordered Sprint to rehire the workers with full back pay.
Sprint immediately filed an appeal of the ruling to a U.S. Appeals Court. That will keep the case spinning around the legal system for at least another year and a half, and a Sprint spokesman already has predicted a further appeal to the Supreme Court if the company loses this round.
A remarkable aspect of this case is that Sprint openly, unashamedly, admitted to more than 50 illegal violations of the La Conexion workers' rights at an earlier trial before an administrative law judge.
Knowing that it would receive no more than a wrist slap for its union-busting activities--creating an atmosphere of surveillance of union supporters, having managers interrogate workers one-on-one about the union campaign, openly threatening to shut the office if they voted for the union--Sprint's lawyer brigade brushed off these charges and focused only on the issue of Sprint's motive for the closing. That was the one issue that could provide a real, costly, remedy for the workers.
And sure enough, a slap on the wrist it was for the 50 violations. The administrative law judge's order amounted almost to a sick joke: Sprint was required to write a letter to the workers, after their office was closed for good, stating that it would not in the future violate their rights to organize a union.
Now, finally, a meaningful remedy has been ordered, but Sprint is determined to see that justice is delayed for as long as it takes. Perhaps the company hopes that some of the workers will be dead, and others scattered to the winds no longer to be found, by the time its legal appeals have been exhausted.
Clearly for Sprint, routinely violating labor laws is viewed simply as a smart strategy to enforce its acknowledged objective of remaining ``union free.'' And its associated legal bills are merely a cost of doing business.
This attitude is not unique in the corporate world--in fact, it's becoming the norm today.
A recent study by researchers at Cornell University was inspired by the Sprint/La Conexion Familiar case. It was the first study specifically of the impact of the threat of plant and office closings on worker union drives.
The study found that in fully one-half of all organizing campaigns, as well as in 18 percent of first contract negotiations, employers today threaten to close their facilities. And employers follow through on the threat 12 percent of the time.
This represented an increase in shutdown threats from 30 percent, as found in earlier studies by the same researchers, to 50 percent today.
The result, Cornell reported, is that worker organizing success rates are cut from about 60 percent to 40 percent when the employer threatens to close the facility.
No wonder. What more devastating weapon could an employer use to kill a union drive than to declare--``vote for the union and you lose your job?'' The answer is, shut the office down even before the union election, which is what has made the La Conexion Familiar affair stand out as a case that's being closely watched around the world.
It's somewhat ironic--and certainly must seem so to Sprint--that the La Conexion Familiar workers have emerged as martyrs on the workers' rights battleground.
Sprint clearly thought that a group of mostly immigrant, mostly female workers who spoke only Spanish could be easily intimidated and turned away from their union campaign.
But they weren't intimidated, and I later learned why at a public hearing on the La Conexion affair in 1995 conducted by the Labor Department. One of the workers, a woman from Peru, had testified and was subsequently asked by a news reporter:
``If you knew you could lose your job, why did you keep supporting the union?''
The young woman replied: ``What does risking a job matter? In my country, workers have risked their lives to have a union.''
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