A female stagehand's complaint has led the National Labor Relations Board to rule bias in the IATSE Denver local's hiring-hall operation.
The NLRB has ruled that Denver Theatrical Stage Employees Union No. 7 must "cease and desist" from three activities: (1) biased operation of its hiring hall; (2) refusing to "refer Carole Miron, or any other stagehand, without reference to objective criteria"; and (3) denying rights of workers under the National Labor Relations Act.
The board has also ordered the local to reimburse Miron for any money lost as a result of the union's illegal actions, and make available to federal authorities all payroll and personnel records involved in the case.
The June 6 ruling by a three-member panel, released to the public last Friday, did not include the NLRB general counsel's request to order the local to "maintain objective written criteria" on running its hiring hall. That led one panel member, R. Alexander Acosta, to write a dissenting opinion to the ruling.
Acosta's dissent noted that the local's "business representative who ran the hall did so based on 'subjective determinations' as to the experience, skills, and abilities of applicants. The business representative classified applicants for work into a 'core group' and a 'noncore group,' and referred core group workers first. Workers were not told in which class they were placed. Workers were not provided a procedure for disputing their placement in the noncore group. And, most notably, the [local] classified prospective workers using no objective standards but rather through 'mental filtering' by the?business representative."
Acosta added that he agreed with the general counsel that, requiring the maintenance of objective written criteria "for a period of years" would represent a reasonable remedy.
The Case for Miron
Miron had worked as a stagehand using the local's hiring hall since 1993, but had never become a member of the union. She applied for membership in 1997, but the union rejected her. The NLRB report did not state why. According to the report, Jim Taylor -- the local's business representative -- referred Miron for work three to five days a week during the years 1993 to 1998. In 1999, she applied to Taylor for participation in IATSE's pension fund. Taylor responded that she was only in her first year of eligibility, and needed three years. Miron disagreed with Taylor. Following that, Miron began receiving fewer assignments from the local and at one point, on May 16, 1999 -- according to Miron -- Taylor told her to consider seeking other employment. With fewer jobs coming, by Aug. 20, she had decided it was fruitless to seek further union referrals, and filed the unfair-labor-practice charge with the NLRB.
Albert A. Metz, the NLRB's administrative law judge -- who first ruled on the case before its going to the board -- stated that the local's "hiring hall referral standards are based upon Taylor's subjective determination of whether a person is seeking to make a living as a stagehand and other assessments. His mental filtering of referral candidates involves the categorizing of individuals into a preferential 'core' class that receives primacy in referrals. Based on the record as a whole I find that this ill-defined and subjective method of referring employees does not meet the Act's standards for objective criteria."
The judge said that, while the local's handling of Miron's pension-eligibility request -- which included misplacing some of her W2 forms -- was haphazard, it was not illegal. But the judge added, "It is suspicious that this conduct coincides with the arbitrary denial of referrals to Miron."