NLRB opens unfair labor case against Kaiser

Both sides tells judge they aren't ready to settle
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Karen Dorn Steele - Staff writer


OAKLAND, Calif. _ Stacks of documents for a protracted legal battle were piled high Monday on the first day of the government's case against Kaiser Aluminum Corp. on unfair labor charges for locking out its union workforce.

The lockout at two plants in Spokane and at plants in three other cities occurred Jan. 14, 1999.

Lawyers for Kaiser from Chicago and Houston arrived at the National Labor Relations Board regional office here hauling a large blue trunk full of documents.

Counsel for the NLRB and the United Steelworkers of America had stacked a tall pile of their exhibits when Administration Law Judge Michael Stevenson arrived to convene the four-week trial.

Stevenson groaned when he saw the mountain of paper on his desk, calling it "psychological warfare."

His first question: Were the two sides prepared to settle now, although recent efforts to end the case with NLRB settlement judge Clifford Anderson had failed?

The answer was no, despite a company counteroffer to the union last week, said Joel Kaplan of Chicago, Kaiser's lead attorney at the trial. He said the Steelworkers had not made a counteroffer and "we don't want to bid against ourselves."

"The parties are still far apart," said Jeffrey Demain, an attorney for the Steelworkers.

Stevenson said he has no authority to force a settlement, but he encouraged the union to produce a counteroffer, "if only for appearances sake ... to put the ball back in their court.

"I may see fit to inquire again ... every single day we meet here, until there is no possibility of settling this case," Stevenson said.

He made good on his promise at the end of the day, meeting privately with each side.

The financial stakes are potentially high for Kaiser. An adverse judgment could force the company to pay some back wages to the nearly 3,000 Steelworkers from the date of the lockout to the date of settlement 21 months later.

The union has calculated back-pay liability as high as $337 million. Kaiser disputes that figure and said it is confident of winning the case.

In his opening statement for the government, attorney George Valastegue said Kaiser's 50-year history of good labor relations was shattered after Houston-based Maxxam Inc. bought the aluminum company. The purchase was completed in 1988.

"It began to be apparent that Kaiser's bargaining strategy was to change the scope of the bargaining unit" by offering side deals to Steelworker locals to weaken the international union's master contract for the five plants, the government attorney said.

Kaiser's proposal for a new contract in the fall of 1998 "gutted the master agreement," Valastegue said.

The union struck on Sept. 30, 1998, but offered to return to work under terms of the old contract on Jan. 13, 1999. Kaiser declined the offer and locked out the workers the next day.

Kaiser illegally used the economic pressure of the lockout to change the scope of the bargaining unit, Demain claimed.

The Kaiser labor dispute was finally resolved this fall after several unresolved issues were submitted to binding arbitration, Kaplan said. He denied that the company used illegal tactics to pressure the union.

"We locked them out to resist the union's bargaining demands. At the time of the lockout there was a wide gap in positions. The only way to close the gap was by applying economic pressure," Kaplan said.

It was economically necessary for Kaiser to push for "plant-specific" proposals to deal with unique problems at its plants in Spokane, Tacoma, Gramercy, La., and Newark, Ohio, Kaplan added.

He also noted that the NLRB regional office has already tossed out the union's unfair labor practice charges accusing the company of bargaining unfairly in fall 1998.

"We've been found not to have done anything illegal prior to Jan. 14, 1999. I have some concern that the (NLRB) general counsel and the union want to find something unlawful" about the company's bargaining strategy leading up to the lockout, Kaplan said.

He also accused the Steelworkers of using unfair bargaining tactics, including a threat to continue the labor dispute if Kaiser would not declare its "neutrality" on the international's right to organize non-union Kaiser facilities nationwide.

The trial is scheduled for four weeks but holiday scheduling intervals may push the final week into early January. A ruling would follow several weeks later.

The administrative law judge's decision could then be appealed.