U.S. Injunction Against Stevens?

NLRB threatens the "No. 1 labor-law outlaw"

Organized labor views J.P. Stevens & Co., the nation's second biggest textile company, as the key to organizing the booming Sunbelt--precisely because it is, in the eyes of the AFL-CIO, the nation's "No. 1 labor-law outlaw." If this most antiunion of all companies can be organized, the theory goes, so can any other firm in the sparsely unionized South or anywhere else in the U.S. Accordingly, unions have called for a nationwide boycott of Stevens' goods, and sought and won several court convictions of the company for unfair labor practices--all to no avail. Not one of Stevens' 85 plants, mostly in the Deep South, has a union contract;" workers at seven mills in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., have voted for representation by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, but the A.C.T.W.U. has been unable to get Stevens to sign.

Last week, however, the National Labor Relations Board stepped up the pressure on the company by authorizing its legal staff to seek a nationwide court injunction barring the company from using "unlawful methods" against the union in any of its plants. Though injunctions at specific plants are common, the only national injunction ever issued in a labor case was against the International Typographical Union in 1948.*

The NLRB, which is supposed to ensure that unions and management behave with some semblance of civility toward each other, said it would seek the injunction unless Stevens makes good-faith attempts to settle pending unfair-labor-practice suits against six of its plants. At those plants, the Government body has found that Stevens "discharged, reprimanded, harassed and disciplined employees in reprisal for support of a union [and] coercively interrogated employees concerning union activity." Why a national rather than a local injunction? Said the NLRB: "Given the employer's past history and given the evidence that its unfair labor practices still continue after all these years, the board fears that without judicial protection, union campaign efforts will continue to be met by unlawful conduct" at all Stevens' plants.

The translation seemed to be that the NLRB is simply fed up with Stevens and its antiunion attitudes that seem to anachronistically exemplify the South in its earlier, immature stage of industrial growth. Over the years, the board has found Stevens guilty of unfair labor practices 15 times and hit Stevens with $1.3 million in fines. Last summer a federal court of appeals took the unusual step of warning Stevens that any future violations would bring fat fines of $100,000 each, plus $5,000 for every day the violations continued. That was not really much of a threat; such fines are subject to so many court appeals that they cannot be collected for a long time, if ever. Violation of an injunction, however, would cut the red tape and bring prompt fines and possibly even jail sentences for executives.

Joel Ax, associate general counsel of the A.C.T.W.U.. hailed the NLRB's threat to seek an injunction as helping to "encourage workers to freely discuss unionization." Stevens seemed unruffled: a company statement said that an injunction "would be inappropriate and unwarranted, and we are confident that any court would view it in the same manner." Certainly Stevens has not yet been hurt in any financially measurable way by bad publicity about its opposition to unionism or by the A.C.T.W.U.'s efforts to organize a boycott. Indeed, many argue that the fines and legal costs of fighting the unions are small compared with the cost of higher wages and better fringe benefits, like pensions, which organized workers would demand. Last week the company reported that sales in the fiscal year ended Oct. 29 rose almost 30%, to $1.5 billion. Profits, it is true, dropped 14.4%, to $35 million, but they were coming back up in the final quarter. Labor's hope is that the new higher penalties for violating a national injunction will alter the rules of battle and Stevens will suddenly find that it no longer pays to fight. qed

* The I.T.U. had instructed its locals not to sign any contracts without a closed-shop clause--even though the closed shop had just been outlawed by the Taft-Hartley Act Amendment.

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