A two-year battle over whether a union can get the home addresses and phone numbers of Los Angeles County employees who have opted out of funding union political causes is growing more intense, and the outcome could affect labor law in the private sector.

On one side, a local unit of the Service Employees International Union representing some 55,000 county employees wants officials to turn over the confidential contact information of workers who have opted out of funding union political activities. The union says it wants to give those employees information.

On the other side, county administrators have repeatedly pushed back against the union, claiming the privacy rights of its employees will be violated if their home addresses and phone numbers are turned over to union reps.

Some say the workers could feel a chill if they knew union members could call them at home or even drop by their residence.

“The only reason anyone would request this kind of personal information would be to sell the employees something, whether that is a union membership or something else,” said Gary Toebben, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “And the county is not in the business of enabling vendors to sell their employees things.”

In an attempt to resolve the dispute, county lawyers filed a petition with the state court on Sept. 19, asking a judge to rule that the county does not have to give SEIU Local 721 access to the employees’ confidential contact information.

While the fight currently affects public employees, labor and employment lawyers said the dispute could affect private employers that contract with unions if the union wins in court.

“If it goes up to the Court of Appeal, or California Supreme Court, unions and their counsel would cite this decision as a precedent that should be recognized in the private sector,” said Nate Kowalski, a labor and employment lawyer at Atkinson Andelson Loya Ruud & Romo.

County workers are automatically covered by the SEIU contract, and the workers pay 1.5 percent of their wages to the union. Much of that money pays for collective bargaining and the like, but some of it goes to support political candidates and other politically oriented causes favored by the union. Workers can opt out of allowing their union dues to support political causes; those workers pay a lesser amount to the union. That’s in accordance with a California law.

Some employment experts said the SEIU wants to increase the pressure on those so-called opt-outs in order to get more money for its political activities.

“Sure, they are going to want to try to get home addresses because then they can inundate the employees with information,” said Robert Millman, a labor and employment attorney in the Los Angeles office of Littler Mendelson P.C. “It gives you a leg up to have access that you would have otherwise normally not have had.”

SEIU Local 721 covers 85,000 government workers throughout Southern California. The bulk is in L.A. County, where the union represents about 20 different bargaining units, including clerks, social workers, administrative technicians, nurses and librarians.

2006 negotiations

Caught in the middle of the current fight are about 14,512 workers who are opt-outs in SEIU units, according to court documents. As of May 2007, the union had figured out the home addresses for about half of them, 7,290.

Los Angeles County and SEIU have a 30-year history of contract agreements. The county has never provided the nonmember contact information before, and the union had never requested it.

The county claims that during negotiations in 2006, the SEIU insisted that it receive the home addresses and phone numbers of the opt-outs.

The SEIU also wants the contact information of another class of employees, those who stated they declined to join the union because of their religious beliefs. Their membership fees are allocated to charitable organizations.

Don Washington, manager of employee relations for L.A. County, said the county is fighting SEIU’s request because it is protecting the privacy rights of its employees.

“Privacy issues are important to employees, and they should have the right to not disclose information if they don’t want to,” Washington said.

Several labor and employment lawyers said the county is making a reasonable argument by not wanting to turn over such information.

“You need to balance the privacy interests of these people against the labor management issues involved,” Millman said.

But Elizabeth Brennan, a spokeswoman for SEIU Local 721, said the union wants the information to satisfy its responsibility of informing employees about bargaining talks.

“Whether the person is a full member, she is covered by the contract,” Brennan said. “Increases in his or her salary are part of the bargaining process, and because of that, we make every effort to contact everyone to get input about the negotiations. The bottom line is that it is our responsibility to contact workers.”

The county claims that the SEIU has specifically argued that it needs the information to fulfill its Hudson notice requirement. A Hudson notice is a financial breakdown of how union dues are spent.

Historically, the county has enabled the SEIU to send Hudson notices to employees by providing the names and home addresses to a third-party clearinghouse, which mails the Hudson packets to the opt-outs. That allowed the SEIU to fulfill its legal obligations without giving the union the employees’ confidential information.

“Their argument has no merit, because we have been doing it the way we have been doing it for 15 years,” said Washington, the county official. “And it’s an accepted way to fulfill the Hudson requirement.”

The county claims in court documents that a union negotiator said if the SEIU had a chance to talk to the opt-outs, they could convince them to opt in.

Although the SEIU doesn’t explicitly argue that it wants the information to convince the opt-outs to opt in, Brennan said it is important that the organization reaches all employees. “The more people who are involved in anything, the better the outcome.”

The news:


A union wants home addresses of L.A. County union workers who legally opt to withhold a portion of union dues.

The issue:


The county does not want to surrender the privacy rights of employees. Also, employees could be intimidated if the union has their addresses.

What’s next:


The issue is in the courts. If the union wins, it could have implications for private-sector employers.