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5 April, 2010
The ICEM North American affiliate, Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA), continues to win legal victories for 140 Massachusetts workers of Covanta, a private sector waste-to-energy company specializing in public solid-waste contracts that burns the waste for creation of electric energy.
On 26 March, an administrative law judge of the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the company owes the 140 workers nearly US$1 million for withholding wage increases and bonuses in retaliation for staff exercising their lawful right to join the UWUA in May 2008.
The 49-page ruling requires Covanta to repay to workers the money illegally withheld, plus interest, and to bargain with UWUA Local 369 a first collective agreement at a Rochester, Massachusetts, incinerator before it makes any unilateral workplace changes.
The company’s illegal conduct caused workers to lose between 8% and 11% of their annual income in 2009.
The judge’s ruling involves the administrative phase of numerous workplace charges brought by the union against Covanta’s unfair labour practices following the NLRB-conducted union authorization vote nearly two years ago. Late in 2009, the labour agency invoked its powers under US labour law to petition a federal court for injunctive relief against Covanta for labour law violations.
The NLRB invokes Section 10(j) of the labour code only rarely, and only when it deems cases are egregious enough to warrant federal court intervention. The injunction petition is currently pending before a federal court in Boston.
Covanta is likely to appeal the administrative law judge’s ruling to the five-member NLRB, but the recent ruling should lend credence before the federal court.
We’ve “long known that Covanta viciously punished these workers because they organized and demanded dignity and a voice in the workplace,” said Local 369 President Gary Sullivan. “This ruling lets the rest of the world know that, without question, Covanta broke the law and will have to put things right.”
The company operates some 40 solid waste facilities in the US. As Covanta has tried to expand its waste-to-energy business into the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Canada, the ICEM has assisted the UWUA to illuminate the American company’s work rights violations, as well as health/safety infractions and certain environmental practices before communities and trade unions in those countries.
For more information on the UWUA’s Campaign for Justice at Covanta, visit the campaign website here.