Sunny Southwest Victory:
IBEW Members Ratify First Contract at Southwest Gas/Central Arizona Division

Three years earlier, on May 19, 1999, employees at the Central Arizona Division of Southwest Gas won a hard-fought election to gain union representation by IBEW Local 769, Phoenix. The IBEW organizing drive began the summer of 1998.

"As too often happens today, the company, instead of heading to the bargaining table, chose not to accept their employees votes and instead sought to drag the election through the legal system," said Local 769 Business Manager Joel D. Bell. The company also employed endless delaying tactics to stall negotiations, Bell added.

The IBEW drove the long fight for the workers and rallied the entire labor community in the effort. [See "Coalition Building Nets Big Victory at Southwest Gas," IBEW Journal, p. 9, October 1999.]

Local 769s organizing campaign, supported by the IBEW International Office and the Seventh District, was an all-out push. State and local AFL-CIOs pitched in to assist, as did the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). The Central Arizona Labor Council built support for the rally among union members, community allies and elected officials.

The IBEW also launched a powerful corporate campaign of shareholder activism. All the determination and joint hard work ultimately yielded victory.

"Local 769 in Phoenix had endured three years of surface bargaining from Southwest Gas before our corporate program," said IBEW International Secretary-Treasurer Jerry OConnor. "They now have a contract and this is the first of five potential units at Southwest Gas."

Southwest Gas Corp., an investor-owned natural gas utility headquartered in Las Vegas, operates in Arizona, Nevada and California. The Central Arizona Division, with 517 employees, is the largest of five Southwest Gas divisions.

A Monumental Fight

Southwest employees contacted Local 769 in July 1998 to request assistance in a "wall-to-wall" organizing effort. The workers had previously attempted to organize without success and had received many false promises from management. "The employees of Southwest Gas/Central Arizona Division were determined to unite," said Local 769 Assistant Business Manager Jeff Carpenter, who was employed at Southwest at the time of the IBEW drive and was active in the campaign.

"Local 769 Business Manager Joel Bell and the membership let us know they would support our organizing efforts and warmly opened their hall to us," Carpenter said. "In addition to strong hometown support from the local, the International sent veteran Seventh District Representatives Steve Moulin and Fernando Huerta, and later International Representative Tim Bowden joined the campaign.

"We began our organizing drive with the knowledge of a looming uphill battle, but, thankfully, we didnt foresee the monumental war ahead," Carpenter said.

International Representative Moulin, the lead organizer for the campaign, said the initial stage of the drive was conducted on a low-key, word-of-mouth level and included house calls. Organizers opted to stay away from the big meetings utilized in past campaigns, and the new approach achieved good resultsauthorization cards poured in and the internal organizing committee grew stronger, Moulin said.

"Later, when word of our organizing success filtered out, the company retaliated with a vicious anti-union campaign," Moulin said. "The company began holding mandatory captive-audience meetings, supervisors began spreading misinformation and intimidating employees. And one of our key internal organizers was terminated after her involvement in a leafleting campaign."

Corporate Campaign

Six months into the organizing drive, employees were broadsided with news of a pending merger with Oneok Inc., a Tulsa, Oklahoma, based utility company.

"The time had come to broaden the scope of IBEW efforts to a corporate wide campaign," said then-International Vice President Orville A. Tate, Jr., who realized the strategic value of intervening at the regulatory and corporate level and requested an AFL-CIO corporate campaign and a full-time researcher on site.

"Orville Tate and Jim Combs, then-IBEW director of Employee Benefits/Corporate Affairs, with the assistance of the AFL-CIO, put together the corporate campaign," said Moulin, "and the AFL-CIO loaned researcher Sean Cunniff."

Research revealed details of the proposed merger agreement, and employees were dismayed the picture was not so rosy as the company had painted itat least not for the workers.

"Employee benefits were secured only for one year, but key corporate officers were guaranteed extremely plush golden parachutes and contracts," Moulin said. "Worse yet, employees, who were also investors, watched the company turn down a bid of acquisition that was much more lucrative than Oneoks offer." The alternate bid, while still good for investors, was not as plush for corporate officers, although the company tried hard to paint a different picture, organizers said. Southwest Gas mounted a spin-control effort, but the Oneok merger later was derailed.

The companys antiunion propaganda was now in full swing. Employees were inundated with warnings about the "evils" of unionization, including notices posted on a web site for employees.

Meanwhile, employees had submitted nearly the required number of authorization cards. "We mounted a major house-call blitz prior to filing the National Labor Relations Board petition," said Moulin, "and the AFL-CIO, the Arizona state AFL-CIO, and most labor unions in the Phoenix area responded to a request for weekend assistance." After workers voted for IBEW representation in May 1999, Southwest Gas began its stalling tactics.

While the election wound through the legal system, the company increased employee benefits in its other divisions while denying those same benefits to the new bargaining unit at the Central Arizona Division. The companys history had been one of keeping employee benefits at the same level in all its divisions.

The IBEW filed complaints with the NLRB, which issued multiple charges against the company. The union also staged big labor-wide weekend rallies to support workers. "Employees in our bargaining unit held together despite Southwests tactics while our union ensured that the company was held to past practices," said Carpenter. Meanwhile, the International began organizing efforts in some of the companys other divisions.

Shareholder Activism/
Union Rallies

As a May 2000 Southwest Gas shareholder meeting approached, the company was still refusing to bargain.

Organizers made plans to stage a union rally on the day of the shareholder meeting at company headquarters in Las Vegas. The Nevada State AFL-CIO assisted.

"Loudspeakers pumped out music, local union members marched with signs that declared Southwest Gas a lawbreaker and chants were shouted loud enough to be heard inside the meeting," Carpenter said. "We approached shareholders with questionnaires on the failed merger. Shareholders were riled up at Southwests officers and became vociferous after Phoenix employees used the question-and-answer period to ask pointed questions about the merger. We left that meeting with valuable insight and some new allies."

Southwest finally relented to the certification of the bargaining unitsome 15 months after employees voted for IBEW. But company hostilities did not cease. Management brought in an anti-labor attorney to bargain, presented outrageous demands and continued to stall. While delaying at the table, the company again increased benefits at other divisions, created turmoil within the bargaining unit and began a decertification effort.

At this opportune time, Southwest filed for a general rate increase at the Arizona Corporation Commission. IBEW organizers contacted community groups and formed a coalition. "We built a closer bond with the community and Southwest received approximately $17 million less than it had requested, a year later than expected," Moulin said.

The union organizers were ready to spawn another revolt at the next shareholder meeting. "The AFL-CIO provided vans to transport volunteer Phoenix employees/ shareholders to the meeting," said Moulin. "In Las Vegas we met up with the AFL-CIO, which had acquired investor proxies, and gathered members of other Nevada unions willing to use the proxies, to gain entrance to the shareholder meeting."

A Phoenix employee/shareholder had set the tempo for the meeting months earlier by filing a shareholder resolution to delete the "poison pill" clause from the companys bylaws. This clause effectively forces prospective buyers to provide the previous officers with exorbitant golden parachutes, Moulin said.

"This years meeting, like the last, became acrimonious and the Phoenix employees resolution was overwhelmingly passed," Business Manager Bell said. "The nearly universal shareholder response at the meeting dramatically pointed out the fertile ground we had in which to sow future shareholder actions."

A Great Effect: Victory Won

By the spring of 2002, "the continued corporate-wide pressure, the commencement of an NLRB hearing on the companys most recent unfair labor practices and another approaching shareholders meeting appeared to have great effect," said Moulin, and an accord was finally reached on a contract proposal.

"On April 3, after three years of continual struggle since our election and 20 months of negotiations, the Southwest Gas employeesnew members of the IBEW familyvoted by an 80 percent margin to ratify their first contract," Carpenter said. "Truly an effort of hearts and minds."