Daily Journal article on fast food workers quotes Julie Gutman Dickinson

Mar 24, 2014

Friday, August 30, 2013

Through strike, unions battle for toehold in fast food realm

Organizers prepare to file unfair labor practices charges if workers are fired
By Laura Hautala

Daily Journal Staff Writer

The fast-food worker strike movement arrived in California Thursday morning, as workers walked off the job at restaurants such as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King in Los Angeles and Oakland. They held rallies and marches, demanding wages of $15 an hour and the right to unionize without retaliation, and in doing so joined a national movement spearheaded by union organizers at the Service Employees International Union.

In line with union tactics in recent years, workers are shining a national spotlight on the issue of low wages with coordinated strikes rather than by moving to form a union in a particular workplace.

Union membership is at its lowest level in nearly a century, but full-time unionized workers still earn significantly more than nonunion workers. None of the country’s fast-food restaurants are unionized.

“Minimum wage laws leave people living in poverty. They are not sufficient,” said Julie Gutman Dickinson, a partner at Bush, Gottlieb, Singer, Lopez, Kohanski, Adelstein & Dickinson in Glendale who advises a statewide chapter of the SEIU.

If workers inflict enough pain on fast-food restaurants, either by bringing them before the National Labor Relations Board or by creating public demand for higher wages, restaurant owners might decide to consider recognizing a union, said John D. McLachlan, a defense-side labor attorney at Fisher & Phillips LLP in San Francisco.

“Unions are trying to get a toehold where they otherwise absolutely have been unable to do so for 20 years,” McLachlan said. “It is an organizing tactic. The traditional ones haven’t been working so well, and this is another trial balloon, if you will, just to see how it works.”

Organizers said they stand ready to file unfair labor practices charges against restaurants if workers are fired for striking. Workers’ jobs are protected when they go on an economic strike like Thursday’s action. They can’t be fired for participating, but if a strike goes so long that workers are permanently replaced, immediate reinstatement isn’t guaranteed.

Some eateries have already been hit with unfair labor practices charges, which accuse employers of violating the National Labor Relations Act, said Lawrence H. Stone, a managing partner at the Los Angeles office of Jackson Lewis LLP.

“What [the workers] are doing is trying to build community support to put pressure on companies to talk to the union in some way,” said Stone, who defends some companies targeted by strikers. “Otherwise they would go about it through more standard ways of organizing, which is get people to sign cards and have an election.”

Still, lawyers say unionization would be vital for protecting any wage gains workers earn from their efforts.

“Unionization would be such an asset,” Dickinson said. “To be able to negotiate health and welfare practices, health insurance – then you’ll really be able to start to support families.”

In the case of another strike earlier this week involving truck drivers at the Port of Los Angeles, where workers are trying to unionize, the drivers cannot lose their jobs even if they are replaced while they’re striking. The truck drivers had already filed an unfair labor practice charge against the employer, so their strike was protected. They walked off the job Monday at a warehouse in Carson, and labor organizers and clergy members walked them back to their next shift 24 hours later.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is working to organize the truck drivers, who work for Green Fleet Inc. While the truckers are not officially coordinating with the fast-food strikers, they are sharing a Twitter hashtag, #strikeseason, along with warehouse workers in the Central Valley and Wal-Mart workers throughout the country, according to Julia Paskin, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters.

Fast-food workers might have a harder time unionizing than the truck drivers, labor lawyers said. Fast-food restaurants may either be owned by the corporation or franchised to an individual owner, so any collective bargaining would take place on a fractured level. What’s more, the prevalence of part-time workers and high turnover could make it harder to get full buy-in from the workforce.

Saru Jayaraman, who directs Restaurant Opportunity Centers United, said that despite the difficulties, winning and protecting a higher wage will benefit a workforce that has long struggled to get by. While many news reports and commentators have said fast-food workers are increasingly primary breadwinners for families, Jayaraman said it has always been that way.

“The workforce is majority adult and has been forever; that’s not a change,” she said. The idea that workers are younger and not supporting families isn’t accurate, she said. “It’s always been a myth that the industry has put out.”

laura_hautala@dailyjournal.com