Inside
Official
Meeting Notices
See
Page 4
Volume 113
Number 4
February 17, 2012
Portland
Aveda sites are leafleted
in six cities, while in
Portland, pickets follow
a brief occupation
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Local unionists in six cities turned
up public pressure on Dosha Salon Spa
Feb. 7 — several days after the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
accused the company of multiple vio-
lations of federal labor law.
Dosha is an Aveda-branded salon
with five Portland-area locations. Last
March its employees voted to join
Communications Workers of America
(CWA) Local 7901. But Dosha hired
former Oregon Republican Party chair
Bob Tiernan to handle negotiations
over a first union contract, and no con-
tract is yet agreed to after over eight
months of meetings with Tiernan asso-
ciate Al Orheim.
So on Feb. 7, union staff, members,
and supporters leafleted outside
Aveda’s Minneapolis headquarters, at
Aveda locations in Chicago, Los An-
geles, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and
at all five Dosha stores.
Unionists also picketed Dosha’s
Northwest Portland location and briefly
occupied Aveda Institute Portland, a
CWA and allies turn up
pressure on Dosha
Aveda Institute Portland was the site of a brief labor rally Feb. 7. The institute was targeted because its owner, Ray
Motameni, is also co-owner of Dosha Salon Spa, which stands accused by the National Labor Relations Board of
numerous labor law violations before and after its workers unionized last year.
beauty school which is owned by
Dosha co-owner Ray Motameni.
Four days before the blitz, the
NLRB issued a complaint against
Dosha, and set a March 20 date for an
administrative law judge to hear the
charges. Most of the alleged labor law
violations involve management mis-
conduct before and after the union
election — threats, inducements, sur-
veillance and discipline — all to dis-
courage workers from voting for the
union, or to dampen hopes for a first
contract after workers voted to union-
ize anyway.
Management also installed several
surveillance cameras at the Hawthorne
location, where support for the union is
most active. Cameras are aimed not at
cash registers but at areas where em-
ployees meet and discuss. Local 7901
President Madelyn Elder says man-
agers are using them to monitor pro-
union workers, with chilling effect.
The NLRB also objected to numer-
ous rules in Dosha’s employee hand-
book that unlawfully restrict employ-
ees rights to discuss wages and
working conditions with each other.
Some violations listed in the com-
plaint could be resolved if Dosha posts
a notice promising not to do those
things. But the complaint also includes
a more serious charge: that Dosha fired
massage therapist Mary Christ because
of her support for the union.
Soon after she was hired, Christ
joined her new co-workers in demon-
strating support for the union by wear-
ing red feathers in their hair. After that,
Christ says, she was called into the of-
fice for several intimidating meetings
with managers, and ultimately, termi-
nated on Sept. 12.
“I don’t regret it at all, because
[showing the union colors] was the
right thing to do, and it’s what I believe
in.”
Christ is a 27-year-old single mom
with a two-year-old son to support and
$14,000 in student debt from Ashmead
School of Massage to pay down. She
would have made $11 to $13 an hour at
Dosha, but says because she agreed to
do massage 35 hours a week, they paid
her $15 an hour. Now, she’s at Hand
and Stone massage in Happy Valley,
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Some unions call it ‘A vicious attack on workers’ rights’
FAA funding bill includes changes to Railway Labor Act
In what some in labor are calling “a
vicious attack on workers’ rights,”
Congress, for the first time since 1981,
has amended the Railway Labor Act
(RLA). The RLA is a federal law that
governs labor relations in the rail and
airline industries.
[The Railway Labor Act was en-
acted in 1926 with the active support
of labor and management in the rail-
way industry. It was amended in 1934
to establish the National Mediation
Board (NMB) to oversee the law and
to conduct union elections. The Board
is an independent agency in the Execu-
tive Branch that consists of three board
members appointed by the president,
with the consent of the Senate. In 1936,
the Act was extended to include the
U.S. airline industry. It was amended
again in 1951 to permit union-shop
agreements, followed by legislation in
1981 to include public commuter rail-
roads.]
The 2012 amendments to the RLA
were not part of a stand-alone bill, but
rather, were attached to a Federal Avi-
ation Administration (FAA) funding
reauthorization bill that has been held
up in Congress for more than a year.
The amendments were pushed by
anti-union Republicans, favored by
major airlines — and strongly opposed
by 18 international unions because
they had nothing to do with FAA fund-
ing.
“It’s a vicious attack on workers’
rights,” the 18 international union pres-
idents wrote in a letter to Congress
prior to a vote in the Senate.
The revisions, they say, create new
roadblocks for employees seeking
union representation, take away secret
ballot rights, increase the threshold
needed to call for a union election from
35 percent of employees signing cards
to 50 percent, make collective bargain-
ing more difficult, and limit the safe-
guards provided by the NMB.
The union leaders asked that the
amendments to the FAA Moderniza-
tion and Reform Act of 2012 (HR 658)
be deleted and that Congress pass a
“clean FAA reauthorization that all
concerned recognize this country
sorely needs and supports.”
HR 658 does include safety meas-
ures that bring the air traffic control
system into the 21st century, as well as
funding through 2014, which could re-
sult in airport construction projects that
create up to 100,000 jobs.
There was enough good in the bill
that the National Air Traffic Con-
trollers Association (NATCA) and the
Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA)
supported it.
NATCA President Paul Rinaldi
praised its section governing collective
bargaining for his members that pre-
vents a future Administration from uni-
laterally declaring impasse and impos-
ing a contract.
“The measure has an essential col-
lective bargaining provision which ad-
dresses personnel management issues
that permeated the FAA and soured its
relationship with its workforce for
much of the past decade,” said Rinaldi.
“This critical provision ensures the en-
tire FAA workforce will never again
have work and pay rules imposed upon
them.”
ALPA President Capt. Lee Moak
agreed, but conceded: “There’s no
doubt this bill could have been im-
proved by omitting provisions unre-
lated to aviation safety. That compro-
mise was necessary to set the stage” for
the bill’s approval.
Senate Democratic leadership and
House GOP leaders touted HR 658 as
a “compromise” bill. That’s because
House Republicans originally had
sought an amendment to the bill to
overturn a rule implemented in 2010
by the NMB that called for a “major-
ity-rules election process” for railway
and airline workers wanting to union-
ize. Before 2010, workers who did not
cast a ballot in a union election were
counted as a “no” vote.
As the Washington State Labor
Council noted: “This uniquely unde-
mocratic practice was ended and re-
placed with normal majority-rules elec-
tions, the same ones that exist for all
other American workers, and in fact,
are the standard for all elections from
local school boards to the presidency.”
The new rule, however, infuriated
airline and transportation corporations.
After losing a federal lawsuit to have
the new rule overturned, corporate
bosses went to Republicans in Con-
gress, who inserted a provision to do
so in the FAA reauthorization bill.
Democrats opposed it, agreeing
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