Teamsters told not to use American flags as picket signs

By The Associated Press,
freedomforum.org staff

05.24.02

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DES MOINES, Iowa — Union members striking against two concrete companies have been told to remove American flags from their picket sites.

Members of Teamsters Local 90 were told by the National Labor Relations Board May 20 to remove the flags, claiming they were improper "signal picketing."

Federal law allows the union to picket construction sites when a truck belonging to the company they are on strike against is on site delivering concrete, but no company trucks were making deliveries to the sites.

The flags were not "used appropriately in this circumstance," said Greg Naylor, the attorney for Crown Redi-Mix. That company and A-1 Ready Mix are the targets of the strike by the Teamsters, whose three-year contract expired two weeks ago. The union stopped work last week and hundreds of other union construction workers refused to walk past the Teamsters, who initially carried picket signs but recently replaced them with flags.

Union members have been monitoring downtown Des Moines construction projects at Allied Insurance, Wells Fargo Financial, the state judicial building and the Blood Center of Central Iowa.

Naylor said the union had been using "patriotism to protect illegal picketing and to pressure the companies to settle the dispute."

The NLRB agreed the flags couldn't be used as picket signs. "We have no objection to the flag or the union," but strikers cannot use them to signal they are on strike, said Ron Sharp, regional director of the NLRB.

Sharp was out of the office today, but Marlin Osthus, acting director in his stead, told freedomforum.org that the NLRB defines "signal picketing" as "not using the traditional form of picketing," in which signs are carried that identify the union and the employer being picketed.

"Signal picketing" runs afoul of NLRB rules, Osthus said, because "it's not legal to enmesh neutral employees" in a labor dispute through appeals to patriotism or other ideals unrelated to the strike.

"They're free to fly the flag," Osthus said. "All they have to do is also hold up signs saying who they are, who they're picketing against."

But Ron Schwartz, one of 40 Teamsters on strike, said the union picketers should have the right to display the flags.

"Where's our freedom of speech?" he asked. "That's having our rights taken away."

The union and the concrete companies have been communicating through a federal mediator. No face-to-face talks have been scheduled, Naylor said.

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