Unconventional Organizing: Rethinking Labor

Unconventional Organizing: Rethinking Labor

Outside-the-box thinkers achieve landmark gains in labor organizing all over Washington State

By Linda Rapka, AFM Local 47, reporting for ILCA

What do medical interpreters, symphony musicians, and dental office workers have in common?

Among those in Washington State, a lot more than you might think.

All three groups have recently made groundbreaking gains in collective bargaining by working against the grain of tradition and utilizing outside-the-box methodologies to ensure fair treatment in the workplace.


Medical Interpreters Win First-Ever Contract

In July, medical interpreters won a breakthrough contract with the Washington Federation of State Employees, landing the first such agreement for their workers in the nation.

Up until three years ago, Diana Noman, a Russian and Arabic interpreter since the 1990s who played a lead role in the push to unionize her colleagues, had never before seen herself or her colleagues as "unionizable."

"I had a romantic notion of how unions are formed," Noman said. "I myself didn't really think that could be a possibility. You never meet your colleagues, which made organizing difficult. And if you are at the same place, you're speaking another language."

Prior to interpreters organizing, the Department of Social and Health Services, brokers, and agencies signed contracts and made rules without ever consulting them. Noman said for years, workers complained about difficulties serving DHSH clients and get ting paid for their work, but found it hard to be heard without union representation.

Once she learned more about the move to unionize, it started making a lot of sense. Noman answered the call to assist in the giant effort to spread awareness to colleagues about the importance of unionizing their profession.

"WFSE went to the Department of Social and Health Services to get a list of certified interpreters," she said. "They had to put in a lot of work hours just to get an idea of how many active interpreters there were," explaining that the list contained thousands of names not only of active medical interpreters, but also those who may have only had one job several years ago and long since moved to another state, or left the profession entirely. "It was a lot of legwork." By the end, the list was narrowed down to about 2,000 active workers throughout the state.

Medical interpreters, also known as language access providers, help doctors and other medical staff communicate to patients who speak limited or no English. Federal Medicaid law requires that patients be able to communicate with their medical providers, and state budget cuts would have pushed the cost of translations onto medical clinics, hospitals or doctors. One of the main goals of the interpreters forming a union was to streamline the program and eliminate the costly brokerage system to keep overall health costs low.

WFSE said in a statement that the new contract "reforms an archaic and costly brokerage system where middlemen sap up millions of state and federal dollars before they ever get to interpreters providing the services required by federal law." Ending the costly brokerage system freed up funds and allowed the creation of a more efficient online scheduling system, providing additional savings. According to WFSE, the complete campaign won by medical interpreters has lowered administrative costs from 44 percent to 28 percent.

Under the first-time contract, medical interpreters earned improved work rights and minimum hourly pay of $30, as well as provisions for last-minute cancellations and no-shows. The contract provides an agreement to return to the table to discuss economic compensation after the brokerage system ends in January.

But cost savings and wage guarantees weren't the only gains from the new agreement. By organizing, medical interpreters have also gained a voice.

"In organizing, we were able to meet our colleagues for the first time," Noman said. "You saw who else is there doing what you are doing. It was a very eye-opening experience that gave you a better perspective of who's doing this work."

Noman strongly encourages anyone who wants to unionize to make it happen. "If we could do it, pretty much anybody who desires to do so can do it," she said. "It takes lots of legwork and time. But where there's a will, there's a way."


Symphony Musicians Close a Labor Loophole

Refused the right to bargain because of a loophole in federal labor law, musicians achieved a landmark gain when legislation extended the jurisdiction of the state's Public Employees Relations Commission for the first time to the private employees of certain professional symphony orchestras.

Spearheaded by the Musicians' Association of Seattle Local 76-493, the precedent-setting bill passed early last year places symphony musicians under the jurisdiction of PERC for purposes of collective bargaining, marking the first time private employees are included in their jurisdiction. Closing a labor loophole in the National Labor Relations Act, which limits professional musicians in symphonies with annual operating budgets below $1 million from the right to organize, the bill grants bargaining rights to musicians of symphonies with an annual budget between $350,000 and $1 million under state law.

The push to change the law came about when a member of the Bellevue Philharmonic, upset with working conditions, contacted the Seattle musicians union for help.

"When we tried to organize them, we had nobody to run an election or count cards," said Local 76-493 President Motter Snell. "We sent a certified letter to management saying all the musicians had signed cards for union representation, and they denied that. I said we'd hold a mini election and have the ballots sent to our attorney and they'd certify it, but management still said no."

A provision in the National Labor Relations Act means the only way for musicians to obtain representation within small orchestras is with voluntary recognition from the employer, leaving the union's hands tied.
 

"They just said, 'Go away, we don't want to talk to you,'" said Local 76-493 Vice President Joan Sandler. "There was no one to make them in that circumstance," Snell added. "The NLRB said they would not be involved. They said, 'It's up to you guys.' So what we had to do was embarrass the hell out of them."

The union launched PR campaigns and published blog posts, but these proved ineffective and cost-prohibitive. "Our feeling was that we were spending too many resources for something that the workers want," Snell said. "The people playing in the symphony were saying they want to form a union, and they have a right to do it."

Angered by the seemingly arbitrary nature of the NLRA language singling out only those musicians of smaller symphonies, and finding encouragement from her union's legal counsel, Snell and the musicians union set out to change the law.

"Our attorney said that we should try to get some legislation passed on the state level to float some sort of organization that would cover that loophole," she said. "In our state constitution if you have a certain number of people who want to form a union it's automatically done, there's no fight, and PERC certifies it."

Seeing this as the perfect solution, Snell and Sandler set out on a three-year campaign of knocking on legislators' doors and pounding the pavement at the capitol. This proved no easy task for the two, who had never before even set foot in the state house.

"We started getting push-back from the employers in the state," Sandler said. Once the Washington Arts Alliance, which represents employers of all arts organizations, got wind of it, they were quick to voice major concerns. "They said, 'What's gonna happen to the little theaters, the ballet, bars and restaurants who hire piano players?'" Snell said. "We were getting it from all sides, including some of our legislators. We decided the real trouble we were having was with symphony orchestras, so maybe we'll just restrict it to symphonies."

"It was written very broadly at first," Sandler explained, to garner support of all the labor community. However, after meeting with other unions, everyone agreed that the focus should be solely on the symphony musicians. "They were OK [with the restrictions], because they weren't having trouble organizing. IATSE has no trouble. SAG and AFTRA are on national contracts so they don't have a problem. So we agreed to restrict the jurisdiction to musicians."

They soon found that having a more narrowly defined bill was the key to realizing its passage. Agreeing to the revised language, Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles signed on to sponsor the legislation.

"We had to do a very long campaign," Snell said. "We had an organizing committee of musicians that played in the orchestra. There was always in the back of their mind, 'We don't want to make management so mad at us that when this is over, we're totally polarized.' So we were always trying to be respectful and would always tell management when we would do an action. We have this saying: 'Last one day longer.' And we did. They finally agreed to recognize the union, and we sat down for collective bargaining."

The bill passed by a margin of 30 to 17 in February 2010 and was signed into law by Gov. Christine Gregoire on March 10, 2010. "This is the first time that PERC has jurisdiction over private, nonprofit, non-state employees," Snell said, establishing procedures for collective bargaining between certain private symphony orchestras and symphony musicians.

While the legislation has yet to be used, it sets an encouraging precedent by setting in place a ready-to-use bargaining system for when the day comes that it is needed. "It's a mechanism by which you can force the employer to sit down and bargain," Sandler said. "No one has yet popped up and said they want to organize, and probably won't for a few years until the economy improves. But it will allow us to get a contract a little quicker once they do."


Sunrise Dental: Expanding the Concept of Solidarity

Having never before known anything about the labor movement, dentist and president of Sunrise Dental Dr. Abraham Ghorbanian found himself in a discussion about it while treating a new patient: United Food and Commercial Workers Local 81 President Michael Williams. Their talks inspired him to set precedent and voluntarily unionize the entire staff of his two dental offices in 2007. Four years later, he's grown a network of unionized dental practices to nearly 50 offices throughout Washington, Oregon and soon California.

"I didn't know what unions were all about," Ghorbanian said, laughing at how an ideal now so dear to him had been a novel concept just four years ago. "I realized that labor rights are human rights." To finance unionizing his staff — who can opt to belong to UFCW, Teamsters or machinists union IAMAW — he cut his own pay. The move paid off in the long run — big time. "After we unionized our office in 2007, Mike said to me, 'I want to show the power of unions.' He put the word out to the UFCW membership that a union dental office had opened up, and it caught on like wildfire. We were getting so much business, we had to expand. And expand."

And expand he did. Ghorbanian's network of partnering dentist offices currently numbers 46 throughout Washington state and into Oregon, with the first California office set to join in a few months. He has his sights set on establishing an office in every city in America.

"I didn't know what a blessing this would be," he said.

Committed to serving the labor community, Sunrise Dental works with each individual member's union plan to ensure an absolute minimum of out-of-pocket expenses, which are often zero. And while dental offices catering to the specific needs of union members are not uncommon in the United States, Ghorbanian and his network of partnering dentists not only work to meet the needs of union-member patients, but have set a landmark precedent in unionizing their own staff members.

"It's so wonderful for my employees to have that security of collective bargaining," he said. "It's so good to have employees who are happy and secure. If other dentists would realize how much better it is for them, they would all unionize their offices."

For Sunrise Dental, solidarity doesn't end at the office door. When a union goes on strike, not only does the dental network provide free emergency dental care to the striking union's members, but they also provide active support on the picket line. "Whenever there's a rally, we give our employees the day off to join them," Ghorbanian said. "With pay."

To your average business owner this policy would sound counterintuitive, but Ghorbanian sees it as part of his employees' job. "We want them to be involved," he said. "When striking union members see we’re here when they need them, when they get back to work, they remember us."

Seeing the power of unions as a positive force for not only employee and employer, but also the community at large, Ghorbanian talks passionately about why unions matter now more than ever. "People say the economy is dying, but I believe if we had more business unionize, we wouldn’t have all these economic problems," he said. "Unions have to emerge as a superpower. They have to revive the economy. If everybody was getting fair wages, they could all afford to spend the money to stimulate the economy."

Ghorbanian stresses that his success is rooted in his belief in what the labor movement represents: People coming together to help each other. When some of his colleagues balk at his encouragement for them to unionize their staff, he sees it as a decision doomed to fail.

"It's about sharing. It's about giving. You can only have so many cars and houses," he said. "The greedy become the needy. When they're willing to take less pay and actually work with the working class, guess what? It works. You have to do the right thing."