The union attempting to organize the national headquarters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says the Muslim civil rights group has fired three staffers in an effort to undermine the labor group’s bid. CAIR says the union is spreading “misinformation.”
The charges and counter-charges are the latest escalation in the ongoing fight between CAIR and the Maryland-based Service Employees International Union Local 500, which has been trying to organize its staff since October.
“They are union-busting,” Christopher Honey, spokesman for the union, told the Washington Examiner Friday. “They have created a really hostile workplace atmosphere.”
He said CAIR recently dismissed three staffers who were working for the union, and that was the reason why it filed an unfair practices complaint on Wednesday with the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency. “They even delayed when their cost-of-living increase would go into effect until after they got rid of these people,” Honey said.
CAIR, which has generally allied itself with liberal groups, flatly denied the charge. “No employee has been discharged for anything to do with a union. In fact, the one employee they are referring to tendered his resignation more than 30 days ago and CAIR found a replacement, so clearly there is misinformation being disseminated. That said, CAIR respects the privacy of its employees and will not comment on personnel issues,” it said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
The unfair practices complaint means that an April 24 workplace election that the labor board had scheduled has been indefinitely postponed until the dispute is resolved. The fight involves a bargaining unit of 17 employees at CAIR’s Washington headquarters, according to Honey.
The owner of a Twitter site called @altCairNational, which has repeatedly criticized the nonprofit for opposing unionization, said Friday that it had received a letter from a CAIR lawyer calling on it to stop the tweets. The letter demanded that they “close down any account that uses the phrase ‘CAIR’ in any manner — claiming we are smearing them,” the account’s owner told the Washington Examiner in an email.
The account owner declined to give his or her name but said the owner had previously been “associated” with CAIR and provided details about the organizing effort that conformed with Honey’s claims. Honey said the account was not affiliated with the union. The Muslim advocacy group did not respond to a question from the Washington Examiner regarding the letter. The account owner changed the Twitter account to “@altciarnational” late Friday.
CAIR opposes the union effort, saying that as a religious group it is not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. A regional director for the labor board rejected that argument this month, stating that CAIR was “more akin to a secular civil rights group” and, therefore, its workers were eligible to unionize. Shortly after the ruling, the labor board set April 24 as the date for a workplace election.
Honey said the union was “confident” that it would win but that CAIR began pressuring employees shortly after the ruling. He scoffed at the advocacy group’s claim that it was pro-union, noting that it could have agreed to let the staff form a union at any point.
CAIR has called the union’s claims “meritless.”
“Our allies and supporters should know that this situation has little to do with organizing and employee choice, which we support, and everything to do with the method by which it happens, as well as with protecting CAIR’s legal identity as an American Muslim civil rights organization. We hope to quickly resolve this matter and to publicly share more information as soon as possible. Again, in the meantime, please know that we strongly support a fair and just workplace for all members of our CAIR family,” it told the Washington Examiner earlier this week.
This is not the first time SEIU Local 500 has tried to represent the staff of a well-known liberal advocacy group. In 2014, it bid to represent the staff of Media Matters for America. Media Matters’ leadership initially resisted the effort but eventually agreed to let the union represent its staff.