Call center closure raises rights issue

The dispute grew from the decision of Embarq Corp., the former monopoly local telephone company for Las Vegas, to consolidate a Las Vegas center with one in Altamonte, Fla., eliminating 50 jobs in Southern Nevada. Since then, CenturyLink of Monroe, La., has acquired Embarq.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 396 complained to the National Labor Relations Board that Embarq refused to bargain over the closing of the Las Vegas call center.

The board on March 30 found in the company’s favor.

However, Chairman Wilma Liebman suggested that “the board’s task would be easier, and more importantly, the (law) on collective bargaining might well be better served, if employers were required to provide unions with requested information about relocation decisions whenever there was a reasonable likelihood that labor-cost concessions might affect the decision.”

She continued: “To encourage more constructive good-faith bargaining, we might modify (the regulatory) framework, for example, by requiring the employer to timely advise the union whether its contemplated relocation plan turns on labor costs.”

If the company provided more information to the union and the union didn’t offer concessions, the union couldn’t argue later that it would have made concessions, Liebman said.

In a May 10 memo, board associate general counsel Richard Siegel said his office wants to examine the concerns that the chairman raised and decide whether to propose a new standard for companies to meet.

The complaint made national headlines Monday when The Wall Street Journal cited the case in an editorial saying the rule change “would be an unprecedented intrusion” into corporate boardrooms.

The newspaper criticized the three board members appointed by President Barack Obama for the proposed rule change. The Democrats have a 3-2 majority on the board.

“The current NLRB, the most politicized in memory, is obliging with an unprecedented attack on the free movement of business and capital in America,” the editorial said.

Jesse Newman, senior assistant business manager of the IBEW local, disagreed. He said the board should require disclosure of relocation plans when a union might be able to make concessions that would negate the need to relocate.

“I think it ought to be automatic before the company can even think about losing their employees,” Newman said.

CenturyLink wanted to move to a nonunion location, and in the process, put Las Vegas residents out of work, Newman said. The union wanted to bargain, but the phone company “basically blew us off,” he said.

Newman criticized the board for requiring the company to pay only two weeks in back pay to displaced workers, but he said the board is underfunded and unable to provide protection to union workers. CenturyLink defended the board’s decision but didn’t address the proposed new policy.

“We believe that the judge in the National Labor Relations Board case came to the correct decision in regarding transfer of jobs from Las Vegas to Altamonte Springs, Fla., in 2008,” CenturyLink spokesman Tony Timmons said in an email. “From time to time, CenturyLink balances workload to work force to meet the needs of the business.”

The company created 18 jobs in Florida to handle workload transferred from Las Vegas, Timmons said.

Contact reporter John G. Edwards at
jedwards@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0420.