HAVERHILL — The National Labor Relations Board said the Covanta Energy company violated federal labor laws at more than 50 of its locations nationwide by including illegal work rules in its employee handbooks.
Braintree-based Utility Workers Union of America Local 369, which represents 138 employees at Covanta's waste-to-energy plant in Rochester, Mass., filed the complaint with the labor relations board last year. Covanta operates more than 30 waste-to-energy facilities, including plants in Haverhill, Pittsfield, Springfield and Rochester.
A representative for Local 369 said the rules in question included threatening to fire employees for providing any information about the company to government investigators, the news media or other outside representatives; rules prohibiting solicitation or distribution of unauthorized material anywhere on company property or on company time; and a rule prohibiting employees from discussing their wages with each other or from wearing any political slogans at work.
Yesterday, Covanta spokeswoman Vera Carley said the complaint filed by the union last fall was based on an old handbook that her company subsequently revised, issued a new version last September, and then recently revised again.
"To the extent that there were any disputes over the language, the company rectified that," she said. "We don't believe that any dispute currently exists."
Carley said she believes the labor relations board will find the clarified language and Covanta's long-standing employment practices are in compliance with the law.
Scott Burson, deputy regional attorney for the National Labor Relations Board's regional office in Boston, said the NLRB's regional director has authorized a complaint after reviewing a charge by Local 369 that several rules in Covanta's employee handbook are unlawful.
But he said no complaint has been issued and the regional office is now working with the company to resolve the matter. If a resolution is reached, no complaint will be issued.
The remedy we will be seeking is that anyplace that this handbook is in effect that the language be corrected to something lawful and a notice be posted," Burson told The Eagle-Tribune yesterday. "Of the nine or so unlawful sections we found, I think there are a range of things that seem to fall afoul of fairly well settled and long-standing laws."
Burson said Covanta will be given the opportunity to voluntarily change its handbook to comply with the regional director's findings.
"If we can persuade them to voluntarily correct the violations and post a notice, that would effectively settle the matter," Burson said. "If the employer disagrees with our conclusion, they are entitled to have a trial and it's the obligation of the government to prove there has been a violation of the law."
Burson said a judge could issue a court order requiring Covanta comply with the board's requests.
"Our cases virtually never go that far," he said. "We rarely end up in a situation where we have a court order and someone's going to jail."
In a press release dated Feb. 16, UWUA Local 369 President Gary Sullivan said the board's decision to bring a nationwide complaint against Covanta "confirms our charge that this renegade company runs roughshod over workers' rights."
The press release noted that workers at the Rochester facility voted for representation by Local 369 in May 2008, but have been unable to win a first union contract because of unfair company tactics, including the illegal work rules.
David Leonardi, business agent for UWUA Local 369, said rules that were in place made it difficult to organize a union at the Rochester facility last year.
Leonardi said those rules also caused uneasiness among union members at the facility last fall when the union's chief steward distributed leaflets in the lunch room notifying union members of an upcoming union meeting.
"A supervisor walking behind him was collecting them, crumbling them up and tossing them into the trash," Leonardi said. "I'm sure it made employees feel the company doesn't support them being in or a part of a union. I think the rules were drafted by someone who really pressed the envelope and that they thought they could get away with something."
He said a rule that bans employees from speaking to members of the news media also created uneasiness among Covanta employees who had evacuated the Rochester facility in 2007 after a fire broke out.
"At that time employees were barred from talking to the press," Leonardi said. "They have to get their supervisor's permission to talk to anyone."
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