Wed, 1 Apr 1998 19:20:30 -0800 (PST) Wed, 1 Apr 1998 19:14:01 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 19:14:01 -0800 (PST) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Cornell Professor Under Corporate Attack; SW Labor Studies Conference April 1, 1998 Cornell Professor Fights a Slander Suit By STEVEN GREENHOUSE An an unusual case pitting a claim of defamation against defense of academic freedom, a labor relations professor at Cornell University is being sued for slander by the nation's largest nursing home company. The company, Beverly Enterprises Inc., which operates more than 700 nursing homes, said the professor, Kate Bronfenbrenner, defamed it last year when she declared at a town meeting in Pittsburgh that Beverly was "one of the nation's most notorious labor-law violators." Citing her research on anti-union tactics, Dr. Bronfenbrenner told the 300 people at the meeting that the company systematically dismissed pro-union workers and engaged in other unfair practices to beat back organized labor. In February, nine months after the meeting, Beverly sued in a federal court in Pittsburgh, calling the remarks false and defamatory. Dr. Bronfenbrenner said she was shocked not just by the suit and its demand for at least $225,000 in damages but also by Beverly's demand, in the pretrial discovery process, that she turn over details of research she had conducted over a more than a decade. "I'm very frightened and outraged by this, because it represents a real attack on scholars like myself from taking part in public debates," said Dr. Bronfenbrenner, a 43-year-old untenured professor who teaches courses on union organizing. More than 500 professors from around the country have rallied to her side, contending that the suit is an assault on academic freedom and free speech. In an e-mail petition addressed to the company, the professors described the suit as "an insult to academic inquiry" and said it was "intended to send a warning to Dr. Bronfenbrenner and to other academics not to engage in honest inquiry into topics a powerful corporation finds unpleasant." Dr. Bronfenbrenner is being defended in court by Cornell.Nelson E. Roth, one of the university's lawyers, called the suit "a cowardly effort on Beverly's part to direct attention away from its own conduct." The company, based in Fort Smith, Ark., said it is merely trying to set the record straight after a decade of criticism and pressure from the Service Employees International Union, which is seeking to represent workers at dozens of nursing homes. Beverly officials said they long ignored the criticisms but finally decided to try to stop what they regard as repeated smears. "There has been a constant and widespread repetition of negative and even false things," said Donald L. Dotson, Beverly's senior vice president for labor and employment. "We do ignore a large number of these things. But it reached a point a year ago when it just got out of hand." The company also sued a Service Employees leader who had spoken at the meeting in Pittsburgh, but on March 5 a federal judge dismissed that suit, saying the meeting, sponsored by several members of Congress, should be considered a legislative proceeding and therefore protected from such a suit. If so, Dr. Bronfenbrenner's defenders said, the suit against her should be dismissed as well. Beverly, meanwhile, has said it would appeal the other suit's dismissal. Company officials said that in her remarks at the meeting, Dr. Bonfenbrenner was acting not as an objective researcher reporting results of her studies but instead as a pro-union propagandist bending the truth to help the union's efforts to organize workers at nursing homes in Pennsylvania. Dr. Bronfenbrenner said that her research supports her remarks against the company, although she did not deny support for union causes. In her research, she has interviewed organizers and rank-and-file workers to learn what anti-union tactics companies use and, in turn, which union tactics work best. Within the labor movement, she is respected for the research, which has found, for example, that in 50 percent of organizing drives, companies threaten to close a plant if workers there vote for a union. Roth, Dr. Bronfenbrenner's lawyer, said he fears that the company's demand for details on her research will occupy her for months and force her to disclose the names of organizers and workers she has interviewed confidentially. "Why should anyone talk to a respected scholar, and how could this type of research be done, if they know an employer can simply start a defamation lawsuit and have all those notes of their conversations turned over?" Roth said. Among the 300 people at the Pittsburgh meeting were Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and five members of the House. Lawmakers said that the session was organized to examine Beverly's labor-law violations and gather information for a bill that would bar companies that break labor law from obtaining federal contracts. Beverly officials characterized the meeting as an opportunity to bash the company and bolster the union's organizing drive. Among the professor's defamatory remarks, Beverly officials said, was her statement that the company had repeatedly refused to bargain with the union at a number of nursing homes. In fact, Dotson said,Beverly has negotiated contracts at dozens of homes. Further, he said, of 60 recent organizing drives at Beverly nursing homes, the Service Employees declined to file unfair-labor-practice charges in 44. Dotson, who was head of the National Labor Relations Board in the Reagan administration, said there was "irrefutable evidence" that Dr. Bronfenbrenner's remarks "were based on many gross errors concerning Beverly, which should not have been the case if rigorous research really had been conducted." Dr. Bronfenbrenner declined to offer a point-by-point defense of her comments at the meeting. But Service Employees officials pointed to numerous government findings that Beverly has engaged in unfair labor practices at dozens of nursing homes. In 1995, for example, the General Accounting Office, the auditing and investigative arm of Congress, identified Beverly as one of 15 companies guilty of "more serious" labor-law violations. And in November, an administrative law judge, describing "wide-ranging and persistent misconduct," said Beverly had violated the law by failing to reinstate hundreds of strikers at 20 nursing homes. The judge wrote of"coercive tactics such as blatant surveillance of union activities, threats of retaliations, suspensions and discharges of union supporters." Dotson acknowledged that Beverly often violated labor law in the 1980's, but said it had cleaned up its record in recent years. Of the lawsuit against Dr. Bronfenbrenner, he said: "It's not our desire to destroy anyone or harm anyone. If we could arrive at some accommodation to set this situation right and to set the record straight, that's all we're looking for. We just want the truth." Julius Getman, a University of Texas law professor who was a sponsor of the petition supporting Dr. Bronfenbrenner, said Beverly had other motives: "It's part of an effort by management that 'got the unions on the run, and let's use the law as a weapon against them.' " Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ======================================= Subject: Southwest Labor History Ass'n Conference Organizing: Past, Present, & Future 24th Annual Southwest Labor History Association Conference April 24-26, 1998 St. Edward's University Sponsored by: Texas, AFL-CIO; School of Behavioral & Social Sciences, St. Edward's University Preliminary Program Schedule FRIDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 24TH, 1998 3:30-5:15 Session 1:A Migratory Labor in Film "Border Heat and White-Line Fever: Images of Migratory Labor in Film," Tom Zaniello, Northern Kentucky Univ. Session 1:B Telling Labor's Story Roundtable Discussion on Labor Narratives Discussants include Jack Getman and William Forbath, both from School of Law, Univ. of Texas, Austin Session 1:C Community Organizing & the Environment "Gender Identity in Working-Class Women's Organizing around Toxic Waste," Ann Herda-Rapp, Univ. of Illinois "GASPing for Air: Labor, Community, and Environment in Pittsburgh," Rob Gordon, Wayne State Univ. 5:30-6:30 Reception 6:30-7:30 Plenary Session I "Community Organizing in the 1990s," speaker to be announced SATURDAY MORNING, APRIL 25TH, 1998 9:00-10:15 Plenary Session II "Looking Backward: Imagining the Future of Labor in the Past," Elizabeth Faue, Wayne State Univ. 10:30-12:15 Session 2:A Rhetoric and Revolution in France and Germany "Print Workers and Revolutionary Rhetoric in Leipzig and Berlin, 1848-49," Richard Skinner, St. Edward's Univ. "A Union of Women: The Union des femmes and the Paris Commune of 1871," Carolyn J. Eichner, Univ. of South Florida "Constructing a French Identity: The Champagne Workers and the Revolution of 1911" Kolleen Guy, Univ. of Texas, San Antonio Session 2:B Globalization and Labor in the Americas "Chilean Workers and the Neo-Liberal Model," Jonathan C. Brown, Univ. of Texas, Austin "Mexican Workers and the Neo-Liberal Model," Marco Augusto Gomez Solorzano, Universidad Autonoma Mexicana - Xochimilco Session 2:C Rhetoric and Practice of Cold War Era Labor Organizers and Bureaucrats "Red Americanism Struggling to Control the Narrative: Conflict, Disjuncture and Patriotism in the Oral Life Story and Trial Documents of a Minnesota Communist," Mark Soderstrom, Univ. of Minneapolis "The Lives of Sidney Lens: American Radicals and the American Worker from the Depression to Vietnam," Jeff Coker, Ohio Univ. "George Meany, The Cold War and Union Organizing, 1945-1980," Anders G. Lewis, Univ. of Florida 12:30-1:30 Catered Lunch SATURDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 25TH, 1998 1:45-3:15 Session 3:A Arbitration, Negotiation, and Fair Employment Practices "Perspectives on Arbitration and Mediation," Marsha Kelliher, St. Edward's Univ. Roundtable discussion, Gretchen Paulig & I.B. Helburn Session 3:B Organizing Miners: Region, Race, and Ethnicity "Making Sense of the Molly Maguires," Kevin Kenny, Univ. of Texas, Austin "Italians in the Arizona Mining Industry, 1890s-1920s," Phylis Cancilla Martinelli, St. Mary's College Session 3:C Public Sector Organizing in Texas "University Organizing from Within: University Staff Association, Univ. of Texas, Austin," Peg Kramer, President University Staff Association. 3:30-5:15 Session 4:A Race and Region: Segregation in the Workplace "Workers, Organized Labor, and the Ku Klux Klan in Buffalo, New York during the 1920s," Shawn Lay, Coker College "No Gold Watch for Jim Crow's Retirement: The Abolition of Segregated Unionism at Houston's Hughes Tool Company," Michael Botson, Houston Community College, Northwest Campus Session 4:B Organizing Labor and the Law: Unions and State Policy "Organized Labor and the State in Worcester, Massachusetts 1935-1955, " Bruce Cohen, Worcester State College "The threat of termination: Employment insecurity, cotton textile workers and changes in the at-will rule," Bart Dredge, Austin College SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 26TH, 1998 9:00-10:30 Session 5:A Representations of Labor and the Working Class: Ethnicity, Race, & Gender "Re-Interpreting Urban Violence: George Lippard's Construction of the Kensington Riots of 1844," Paul Erickson, Univ. of Texas, Austin "'He Got Her in a "Friendly Way"': The Representation of African America and Mexican Women in Austin, 1890-1914," Lilia Raquel Rosas, Univ. of Texas, Austin Session 5:B Regional Differences in the CIO "The CIO Unions in Texas," George N. Green, Univ. of Texas, Arlington "Mixed Melody: The Packinghouse Workers and Ernesto Galarza in 1950s California Farm Labor, 1954-1960," Don Watson, ILWU, retired Session 5:C Current Issues in the Workplace "Talk and Action at Boeing: Lessons for Scholarship and Organizing," Dana L. Cloud, Univ. of Texas, Austin "Class Issues in Workplace Violence--Three Case Studies" Dianne R. Layden, University of Redlands SUNDAY MORNING APRIL 26TH, 1998 10:45-12:15 Session 6:A Labor in the South: Strategies and Problems in Organizing "The Knights of Labor and the Congressional Investigation of the 1886 Southwest Strike," Theresa Ann Case, Univ. of Texas, Austin "Sentimentalism not Socialism: The A.F. of L. andthe Southern Child Labor Problem," Shelley Sallee, Univ. of Texas, Austin Session 6:B Workers Voices and Values "Voces de la Frontera\Voice of the Voiceless," Christine Neuman- Ortiz Session 6:C Organizing Women Workers in Texas "Women in Garment, Textile, and Food Procession : Unionization Efforts, 1930-1960," Glenn Scott, Austin Federation of Teachers Conference Registration and Information Address conference registration/inquiries to: Kathleen Brown, SWLSA Conf. Coordinator, St. Edward's University, 3001 South Congress, Austin, TX, 78704 (512) 416-5876; FAX (512) 448-8492 kathyb@admin.stedwards.edu Southwest Labor Studies Association: SWLSA is one of the oldest labor education organizations in the United States and represents a unique association of labor activists, labor scholars,artists, and students. The new challenges of the global economy require new organizing strategies based on analysis of the internationalization of capital, economic disparities, trade and immigration issues, and technological developments. The 24th conference explores organizational strategies and worker experiences of the past and present in an attempt to forge links among those interested in creating a more equitable society. For membership information please contact the SWLSA, c/o Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 South Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90044, (206) 759-6063. Thank you, Kathy Brown St. Edward's University kathyb@admin.stedwards.edu