Double Whammy for NP

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It was an especially bad week for Wendy P. McCaw, controversial owner and copublisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press, in her ongoing battle against newsroom employees and their efforts to secure union representation by the Teamsters. On Monday, March 12, Administrative Law Judge William Schmidt issued a sweeping and pointed repudiation of all of McCaw’s arguments as to why last September’s lopsided newsroom vote in favor of the Teamsters union should be invalidated due to allegedly coercive, intimidating, and deceptive tactics employed by union organizers and their supporters.

The next day, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a brief though equally sweeping statement announcing it would prosecute the News-Press for a satchel full of unfair labor practices, including but hardly limited to management’s decision to fire eight pro-union reporters in recent months. In early February, the newspaper fired seven reporters for hanging a banner over a freeway overpass urging passing motorists to boycott Santa Barbara’s increasingly embattled daily newspaper. The NLRB announced it would prosecute the News-Press owner for firing workers, punitively reassigning pro-union workers, asking employees coercive questions regarding union activities, giving poor job evaluations to pro-union workers, and prohibiting newsroom workers from wearing buttons or displaying signs bearing protected slogans like “McCaw Obey the Law.” In addition, NLRB attorney Brian Gee announced he would ask his higher-ups to take the offensive against McCaw by seeking an injunction against her and her attorneys from engaging in such conduct in the future.

Paul Wellman

Judge Schmidt’s ruling came almost two months to the day after the two-day hearing on News-Press allegations of union misconduct concluded in Santa Barbara’s federal bankruptcy courthouse, a building that McCaw owns. In his 22-page opinion, Judge Schmidt concluded that newspaper management failed to present any convincing evidence of misconduct by the union or its supporters, let alone to make the case that such misconduct was sufficient to disqualify the 33-6 pro-union vote and force a new election. Schmidt, who exuded an air of practical informality throughout the hearing, roundly dismissed many of the claims made on behalf of McCaw as “incendiary rhetoric.”

In addition, the judge took detailed exception to the testimony of management’s two chief witnesses — editorial page editor Travis Armstrong and associate editor Scott Steepleton — accusing them both of making “extreme embellishments” on the witness stand. Schmidt was notably unimpressed by Armstrong’s testimony that he had been intimidated by about 20 newsroom workers who jammed into his office on July 13 to deliver a letter containing their list of demands. On the witness stand, Armstrong likened the pro-union workers to “storm troopers.” Schmidt ruled there was no evidence to indicate the workers’ conduct was anything but respectful and orderly, concluding that Armstrong’s testimony to the contrary was “entirely manufactured for purposes of this proceeding.”

Schmidt was even more scornful of Armstrong’s testimony that he’d twice seen Teamster organizer Marty Keegan lurking in a parked car outside Armstrong’s apartment late last summer. Armstrong testified that he hadn’t recognized Keegan — a prominent figure at many of the anti-News-Press rallies and press events staged in De la Guerra Plaza — until he saw him that day in court. Schmidt wrote that Armstrong’s accusation “had no ring of truthfulness at all,” adding, “For these reasons, I do not credit his self-serving characterizations without convincing corroboration.”

Instead, the judge indicated he was far more convinced by the testimony of reporter and pro-union activist Tom Schultz, since fired, who contended the exchanges between the newsroom workers and Armstrong were far more courteous than contentious. “This whole episode amounted to nothing more than a simple effort by employees to begin a conversation about their grievances,” Schmidt declared. “No amount of prevarication can turn it into anything else.”

News-Press attorneys David Millstein and Sandra McCandless argued that such episodes — coupled with an incident last August in which about 20 newsroom employees marched on McCaw’s office in an unsuccessful effort to engage her in discourse — created such a hostile and intimidating work environment that other employees felt coerced into voting for the union. Likewise, they argued that newsroom employees had been duped into thinking the union drive enjoyed management’s blessing because the union and its newsroom supporters maintained a Web site called savethenewspress.com. The judge concluded that few, if any, potential voters were confused about where the Web site’s sympathies lay.

Perhaps the most explosive evidence the News-Press legal team provided was a posting that appeared briefly on the popular Blogabarbara Web site, detailing a campaign of corporate sabotage to be inflicted upon the News-Press. This unsigned blog — posted on September 11, five years after the World Trade Center bombing — indicated that former News-Press workers would hack into the newspaper’s computer system, delete news articles, and otherwise wreak high-tech havoc on their former employers. Newspaper management argued this threat supported their belief that they were facing “an all-out war” led by the Teamsters.

During the hearing, Judge Schmidt lambasted News-Press attorneys at great length for making such accusations without providing any substantiating evidence. In his final ruling, Schmidt merely noted that two News-Press reporters active in the union drive quickly disavowed the pro-sabotage posting, and that the posting itself was removed from the Blogabarbara site within 12 hours because its pseudonymous editor Sarah De la Guerra deemed it “domestic terrorism.” McCandless and Millstein argued the posting helped foster a climate in which free elections could not be held.

While Schmidt expressed disapproval of the posting — and others that compared McCaw to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il — he found that that such third-party communications did not remotely approach the legal requirements needed to invalidate the union election results. And given how upset News-Press lawyers were about the incident, the judge found it curious that newspaper management never notified Santa Barbara police at the time.

News-Press spokesperson Barry Cappello said the News Press is review its options whether to appeal Schmidt’s decision. (For more on Cappello’s throughts see Independent.com.)Teamsters’ attorney Ira Gottlieb exulted in the totality of the victory, stating, “We’re hoping now she’ll [McCaw] get real and sit down with us.” But many union activists assume that decision will be appealed. “It was very satisfying to read,” said fired reporter Melinda Burns of the judge’s opinion, “but we won that election back on September 27. We still don’t have a contract. We still haven’t sat down to negotiate, and we still don’t have a certified election.” Since the election, eight of the News-Press workers who voted for the union were fired, while another four quit. In December, the NLRB announced it would prosecute Burns’s termination as an unfair labor practice. The News-Press claims Burns, a veteran reporter with many awards to her credit, was guilty of journalistic bias and was terminated accordingly.

Burns and other union supporters said their only hope is that the NLRB will agree to impose an injunction against McCaw and the News-Press ordering all of the terminated employees back to work. “In the meantime, she’s been given a very, very, very long leash with which to break the law,” Burns said.

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