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New Era Cap vs. Teamsters

By Fred O. Williams NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER
Updated: 12/23/07 7:37 AM


It’s not a Christmas story that an apparel maker would wish for.

New Era Cap Co., based in downtown Buffalo, would like to be basking in goodwill. While other garment makers have moved overseas, its plants in Western New York and Alabama employ about 1,500 U.S. workers.

Instead of receiving good wishes, New Era is the target of a union campaign that spans four nations. The Teamsters union is aiming charges of discrimination and union retaliation at a 100-job warehouse in Alabama, where the union is trying to negotiate its first contract.

Union supporters are leafletting Foot Locker stores where the caps are sold in Canada, England and Hong Kong, and student activists are holding demonstrations on college campuses.
The company says the high-profile accusations are designed to gain leverage at the bargaining table. The contract struggle in Mobile is being watched by two other New Era factories in Alabama, with more than 600 workers.

“It hasn’t hurt our business at all,” New Era corporate communications manager Dana Marciniak said of the campaign. However, “I think everyone is concerned about the campaign and wants it to be resolved.”

Few of the facts are undisputed. What does seem clear is that the labor strife that rocked New Era’s home turf in Western New York, where a strike flared up in 2001, has followed it to the Southern state where it performs the bulk of its U.S. factory work.

Now, the once-hostile union here is coming to the company’s defense.

“We have a very good relationship with New Era Cap in Derby,” said David Palmer, district director of the Communications Workers of America. Unless the labor board or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission verifies the Teamsters’ complaints in Mobile, “the CWA is not going to be on that bandwagon.”

New Era has invested millions of dollars for top-end embroidery equipment at Derby since the end of the strike in 2002, he said. Nearly 400 workers there could be undermined if the Teamsters campaign hurts sales.

New Era makes official on-field caps for pro baseball players, plus caps for fans of other pro and college sports, some of them produced at offshore contractors. It started opening plants in Alabama in 1998, a year after the CWA organized the Derby factory. The sites of the Southern plants, in Jackson and Demopolis and a warehouse in Mobile, have lower average wage rates than Western New York, and a fraction of the union presence.

The warehouse workers in Mobile joined the Teamsters this summer in a close, 57-to-53 vote. The campaign generated a flurry of labor board charges from workers and discrimination complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Among those speaking up is Felicia Walker, 38. She was fired in June after working as a “stock picker” for 13 months, during which she rose to a shift leader position and learned to drive a forklift.

“They told me someone told them I had stolen caps,” she said. But “I think they fired me because of my involvement with the union.”

Walker said she distributed petitions and authorization cards supporting the Teamsters, so her pro-union stance was obvious. She denies the theft, and said the company didn’t confront her with evidence to support the accusation.

Marciniak said that managers in Mobile were convinced that Walker did take caps after questioning her about the accusation, despite her otherwise good record.

Walker was among a halfdozen union supporters who have been fired since the Teamsters campaign began, according to Jim Gookins, business manager of Teamsters Local 991 in Mobile.

“They were very active — they were our leaders,” he said.
The company has let people go, but not for union activity, Marciniak said. A pending investigation by the NLRB should determine whether the firings were retaliatory, which would be a violation of labor law.

New Era is pointing to its record as an employer to defend itself from the charges. The company has had a good relationship with the CWA since the bitter strike ended in Derby five years ago. An investigation into discrimination complaints in Alabama was conducted by the EEOC and dropped in 2005.

New Era won a labor-management award from Cornell University in 2005, with support by the CWA.
“This is not an anti-union company,” Marciniak said.
In addition, the Fair Labor Association, an oversight group in Washington, D.C., has put its stamp of approval on New Era’s labor practices. The group issued its compliance certificate for the company’s labor practices in June.

Pay and benefits at Mobile are above the median for the area, the company says, averaging $9.50 an hour. Gookins of the Teamsters said the typical range is actually lower at $8.50 to $9.25.

The company pays 75 percent to 80 percent of the cost for a low-price option health benefit, or 60-65 percent for the higher-end plan, Marciniak said. After a year, workers get a 50 percent matching contribution into their 401(k)s.

The racial discrimination charge is based on the presence of only one African American manager among a managerial staff of 20. New Era says it has three non-white managers at Mobile, who include floor supervisors. Throughout the three Alabama sites there are 11 nonwhite managers and 18 whites, according to company figures as of September.

One thing both sides do seem to agree on is the remedy for the dispute: a breakthrough at the bargaining table.
“I’ll give them credit, I think they’re negotiating in good faith,” Gookins said. Talks have been set for eight days in January, almost as many as have been held since talks began in October. If the Teamsters can get behind the company like the CWA did instead of battling it, “this could be a good relationship.”

fwilliams@buffnews.com