A union-buster’s fear campaign

LIKE MANY working people across the country, employees at Laurelhurst Village nursing home in southeast Portland, Ore., were concerned about their low pay and poor working conditions. Many were also frustrated by a racist unofficial policy barring kitchen workers from conversing in Spanish.

Unlike most workers, however, they decided to fight back--and organize a union. In late February, Laurelhurst Village workers began an organizing drive with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503.

Within a few weeks, a majority of workers had signed union cards. But since current labor law allows employers to force workers into using the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process--a tactic used to draw out organizing drives, intimidate workers and peel off union support--the battle with Laurelhurst Village had just begun.

On March 27, a certified nursing assistant who had been one of the more active members in the organizing campaign was suspended. Several other union supporters, including receptionist Elizabeth Lehr, accompanied their co-worker to a disciplinary hearing, where they questioned managers about the suspension.

Management claimed the reason for the action was a violation of a longstanding policy barring workers from coming to work during their off hours. But this policy had been broken many times in the past, and workers were only made aware at the disciplinary meeting itself that management now intended to enforce it.

After debating management during the hearing, Lehr came into work off-shift on April 1 to distribute flyers on new staffing ratios for nursing homes that were going into effect across the state that day. Lehr was watched by management the whole time she was there.

Later that afternoon, she went back to the facility to meet a co-worker whose shift was just ending. As they left the building together, the administrator and two other supervisors approached Lehr, asked her to leave and threatened to call police if she didn't. Knowing it was her civil right to be there, Lehr chose to stay. She talked with police, and then left voluntarily.

The following day Lehr was called into Director of Operations Hannah Austin's office and accused of stealing other employees' contact information by copying their paychecks. When Lehr protested that she had never done any such thing, she was told management had evidence of her guilt--but, of course, refused to show it to her.

At a recent rally in front of 50 supporters, Lehr described what happened next:

When I still wouldn't accept responsibility for something I hadn't done, the CEO told me I could write that on the form. My hands shook so much, I could hardly write. While I was still writing, they started interrogating me as to whether I had disclosed confidential employee and resident information to any third party, in violation of HIPPA regulations.

I had no time to process what was happening. I asked them to please slow down and wait until I had finished writing, but they just continued to fire questions at me so fast I couldn't answer. It was like a police interrogation. I was terrified. I'd never been disciplined at a job in my life, and I was scared of the intimating legal language they were using.

After rounds of questions and accusations of insubordination, hostile and threatening behavior, they told me I was terminated immediately and banned from the facility. Then they had me escorted off the property.

I asked to be taken out through the side door, because I didn't want the residents who were in the lobby to see me being taken out that way. I wonder if the residents I was close to feel that someone they cared about, and who cared about them, had just disappeared from their lives without explanation. I managed to stay calm as I left the facility, but as soon as I made it to the street, I burst into tears.

Without providing any evidence of wrongdoing, Laurelhurst Village not only fired Lehr, but also challenged her application for unemployment benefits.

MEANWHILE, AFTER Lehr was terminated, workers began to fear for their own jobs. When a number of brave coworkers publicly supported Lehr on a union flyer, Hannah Austin interrogated four of them in one-on-one meetings.

Fifteen of the original card signers from the union drive changed their minds, and eight workers dropped off the organizing committee. But others, including Lehr, are determined to keep up the fight.

On April 30, SEIU Local 503 held a well-attended press conference to publicize abuses at Laurelhurst Village and demand that Elizabeth Lehr be reinstated. The union announced that it had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on Lehr's behalf.

But since the NLRB process can take more than a year to resolve, it will be up to activists in the community, SEIU organizers and Laurelhurst Village workers to demand that Lehr be reinstated--and to put the organizing campaign back on track.

Lehr and her co-workers' story shows the importance of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make union recognition automatic after a majority of workers sign union cards.

One objection to EFCA is that it would overturn the "sanctity" of the secret ballot in the union certification process. But what Laurelhurst management has done in opposing the SEIU union drive shows that all the talk about secret ballots is a cover for attacking workers' rights.

It's long overdue for Congress to curb the harassment and intimidation campaigns that employers unleash on workers who want to form a union. But it won't happen without a fight. Just like the struggle at Laurelhurst Village, it will take workers standing up and demanding our rights.