Sony workers' overtures spark organizing drive

EUGENE, OR -- An organizing drive by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 555 is moving forward at the Japanese-owned Sony Corporation plant in Springfield.

"Our biggest stumbling block right now is getting information to the workers," said Teresa Pronovost, an organizer for the Tigard-based union, fresh from a Sunday organizing committee meeting with some of the employees interested in the union.

Management does not allow access to employees, and security guards have been posted in the parking lot. Pronovost said that management questions why employees would want to join a union that represents grocery workers.

"They are really focusing on the word 'Food' in United Food and Commercial Workers," said Pronovost, who reminds the employees that in addition to grocery workers and meat cutters, Local 555 represents workers at law firms, hair salons, clothing stores, hospitals, pharmacies, medical research and manufacturing plants.

Sony employs 375 full-time workers and 100 to 200 temporary workers. It operates 24 hours a day producing some nine million compact disks a month. Local 555 estimates the bargaining unit would consist of approximately 250 employees.

However, Sony owns 120 acres in Springfield, and expansion of the facility -- more than doubling its size to an estimated 1,000 employees -- is highly possible, union officials said. The organizing drive has sparked a lot of media attention in the Willamette Valley, primarily because it is one of the first union organizing attempts in Oregon's burgeoning high-tech manufacturing industry.

It also has brought attention to Sony and its ability to qualify for a waiver through the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) which allows the multi-billion dollar foreign corporation to operate 12-hour workshifts without paying overtime.

Oregon law requires workers to receive time and-a-half pay when they put in more than 10 hours a day. Sony manufacturing employees have been exempt from that law since June 4, 1995.

Federal labor law still requires workers to receive overtime pay when working in excess of 40 hours during a seven-day week. However, efforts are under way in Congress to change that provision of the 60-year-old Fair Labor Standards Act.

Sony claims its production employees typically work four 12-hour shifts followed by four days off. However, if workers fall short of the 40-hour mark because of illness or other circumstances, they don't receive overtime pay for working more than 10 hours in a single day.

"Looking at the history of this overtime waiver," said Pronovost, "it appears that the original purpose of the exemption was to help companies that are suffering hardships or that are just getting started. We don't see Sony as a company that is having a lot of financial difficulties, and they're definitely not a new company."

Lynn Sheppard, a compliance specialist in the Eugene office of BOLI, told the Eugene Register-Guard newspaper last year, "The reason why a company would want a waiver is to save money."

The waiver is also the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed in February in Lane County Circuit Court. In that case, a former Sony employee, Raymond "Les" Merrill, alleges that the company failed to pay each worker for overtime worked prior to the waiver kicking in June 4. Merrill's lawsuit also charges BOLI with "conspiring" with Sony to deprive hourly workers of a total of $955,500 in unpaid overtime since May 2, 1995. According to the Register-Guard, the bureau denies those allegations and the newspaper reported that the state attorney general's office believes Labor Commissioner Jack Roberts acted legally in granting it.

Two weeks ago BOLI extended Sony's waiver for one month (it was due to expire in June), pending completion of an annual review of the company's labor practices. A key point in that review is whether the company allegedly made employees work more than 13 hours in a day -- a violation of both state law and of the conditions of the waiver.

According to Pronovost, when BOLI requested names, addresses and phone numbers of some employees in order to complete the investigation Sony initially refused, stating it didn't want the information to become part of the public record and, therefore, accessible to union organizers. Sony later reversed itself, providing some names and phone numbers. Union organizers said Sony employees have told them that they are forced to work "off-the-clock" because they are required to change into and out of company shoes and submit to mandatory searches prior to exiting the building after their shift has ended, or face disciplinary action. Company shoes are special shoes needed to maintain the various "clean-room" environments at the plant.

Workers maintain that the procedure takes at least 2-1/2 minutes from the time a worker enters the change room and punches the time clock. The exit search adds another minute. This may seem inconsequential, one worker said, but considering that Sony docks employees "attendance points" if they are 10 seconds tardy or if their clock-in, clock-out times are exactly on the hour, it needs to be addressed.

"Obviously, 10 seconds of time which Sony perceives as its own is very consequential indeed," the worker said. "And whether it takes us 10 seconds or 30 minutes (to change), it is uncompensated time which has been seized from us without compensation and while we are under the control of management and subject to discipline."

According to Local 555, state records show that Sony received $11 million in "tax enticements" from the State of Oregon and City of Springfield to locate the manufacturing plant there. Pronovost said in lieu of the incentives Sony made promises of child care facilities, retraining displaced timber workers, and jobs that paid $11 an hour.

"The folks we're talking to make $9 an hour," she said. "Only 12 percent of its current workforce are displaced timber workers, and there isn't a child care center that we can find."

In fact, she said, one of the issues among workers interested in forming a union is the difficulty they are having finding providers to care for their children for a duration of 12 hours.

Six Oregon companies have received waivers exempting them from paying overtime when workers put in more than 10 hours a day. They include Alcan Cable of Roseburg, Emark Inc. of Lebanon, Entek Manufacturing of Lebanon, Shorewood Packaging of Eugene, and Sony. Hyundai Corp. of Eugene applied for and received a waiver, but officials at the computer-chip maker say they won't use it.