Iron Workers’ struggle leads to 150+ charges at Labor Board

The Iron Workers union at G&D Integrated in Morton is a small shop with big problems.

Fewer than 25 workers at the transportation, warehousing and manufacturing company may be affected, but their experience has resulted in more than 150 charges of law-breaking filed with the National Labor Relations Board, and the consequences could help determine their livelihoods and whether the country is a nation of laws or of bosses.

A company spokesman didn’t respond to repeated questions, but G&D Vice President Curt Fisher told the Pekin Daily Times, “Anybody can file a charge. The filing of a charge does not in any way constitute guilt.”

It’s obviously true that the accused are innocent until proven guilty. However, it’s also true that subjects of open cases have not been exonerated of wrongdoing.

The ongoing dispute started many months ago with workers’ health and safety concerns.

“Workers went to management before they ever reached out to us,” said Vince Di Donato, a Peoria-based district representative with the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers union.

Workers suggested repositioning welding tables, checking crane certifications, and considering an alternative to the oil used on metals for some tanks, which irritated users.

“Management wouldn’t even entertain the idea,” Di Donato said – although weeks later a supervisor promised better welding wire, which workers has requested for months, if workers rejected the union.

TIMELINE

Sept. 7: a group of workers met with management and asked for union recognition. The company refused.

After workers filed for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election, G&D objected to driver David Goodman’s inclusion in the bargaining unit, th union says, and after the NLRB agreed to hear that case G&D fired Goodman on Sept. 30 – not long after two supervisors confronted him in the parking lot and asked to buy the union shirt he was wearing. He declined.

Oct. 13: In an NLRB election G&D workers voted to unionize, 18-4.

After workers won the vote, things got worse. Management began accusing workers of “tardiness and absenteeism that went all the way back to February of last year, which had never happened,” Di Donato said.

Nov. 17: G&D workers, family and friends, and supporters from the Building Trades and other unions rallied in Morton. G&D agreed to start contract talks in November, but their negotiators suspended bargaining in January.

The union says supervisors pushed workers to quit (“constructive discharge” is the term), and by the end of February, about a dozen workers remained.

March 1: G&D summarily laid off most of the work force; two are still working, Di Donato said.

 

“For the employer, it seems like it’s all about power and control,” he added, but “we’re going to fight this tooth and nail.”

G&D traces its history to 1882, when it was founded as O’Neill Transportation in Peoria. Now with locations in Indiana and South Carolina, its annual revenues exceed $160 million, according to Dun & Bradstreet.

“This is the worst conduct I’ve ever witnessed by a company, and it continues to gravely impact these workers, their families, and the wider Morton community,” said organizer Ben Scroggins, from the Ironworkers District Council of Chicago & Vicinity.

(In fact, with relatively little public reaction to the situation, one wonders how people would respond to allegations of an investigation of a burglary, tax fraud or a DUI. Is apparent indifference a sign of disrespect for working people? Disrespect for the law?)

Regardless, the union has turned to the NLRB, which is tasked with protecting workers’ rights  to strike, to be free of retailiation, and to join together to improve their wages and working conditions, with or without a union.

As of April 11, the NLRB has 152 charges levied against G&D, and 144 of them are Unfair Labor Practice charges. (For comparison, the NLRB has 175 total cases in Morton and 392 in Peoria, records show.) Allegations range from wrongful termination and illegal surveillance, to improper discipline and interrogation, and discrimination.

Possible violations run the gamut. According to other unions’ leaders, a G&D supervisor produced a letter supposedly from Komatsu Mining Corp. (for which G&D fabricates parts) claiming lost work that threatened to close the operation. The purported correspondence wasn’t even on Komatsu stationery.

“The number of ULPs we’ve had to file with G&D is way above normal,” Scroggins said. “G&D must stop targeting, threatening, and firing workers for exercising their right to organize.

“This company’s behavior over the past few months should be criminal,” he added.

Besides possible action by the NLRB, two recent events in Washington, D.C., may affect the outcome. First, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo this month said “captive-audience” meetings management requires workers to attend are Unfair Labor Practices and she’s asking the Board to concur.

Such meetings “inherently involve an unlawful threat that employees will be disciplined or suffer other reprisals if they exercise their protected right not to listen to such speech,” she said, adding that stopping such acts doesn’t infringe on companies’ First Amendment right.

“The fact that a threat arises in the context of employer speech does not immunize its unlawful coercive effect,” she said in a memo to NLRB field offices. “Imposing that long-overdue protection of employees’ right to refrain will not impair employers’ statutory or constitutional freedom of expression.”

Also, on March 15, President Biden signed a $1.5 trillion federal-funding bill that not only increases NLRB’s funding and staff, but arrived with instructions from the House Appropriations Committee for government agencies to step up enforcing the law.

“The committee identifies a need for more inter-agency collaboration between the [Labor] Department (including the Wage and Hour Division and OSHA), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board to enforce labor and civil rights laws fully and effectively,” lawmakers said.

Back in Central Illinois, Goodman, the 33-year-old driver who sometimes worked 10-hour days at G&D without breaks, still seems surprised.

“I never had any issue before,” he said. “I showed up, did my job, and got along with everyone.”

Di Donato says the Iron Workers union is standing by the workers, and there’s hope for justice from NLRB rulings.

“We have a fund to help workers in need in the right situation,” he said. “They have submitted applications for membership but don’t pay dues until they are working under a contract. On wrongful termination charges, there can be back pay, benefits, damages and reinstatements. Any other charges that created a loss in wages or benefits can be reimbursed.”

Goodman is more concerned about right and wrong, and about working.

“They cheated all of us out of a job [and] management is getting away with abuse,” Goodman said. “I hope to get a hearing. I want to get back to work.”

Scroggins is impressed with the workers and ashamed of G&D.

“The ironworkers at G&D were being berated by management daily and wanted to form a union to protect themselves against the abusive treatment by management,” he said. “They’ve put in all the work to try to make G&D a better place to work, and the company’s done nothing to listen or improve things – all they’ve poured their money and time into is building up their attack on employees and hiring [outside] union busters to break their union.”

(To keep informed about the ironworkers’ struggle, go to GDIntegratedUnion.com.)