Covanta Charged with Numerous Illegal Actions by Labor Board

Campaign for Justice for Covanta Workers

Welcome to our website dedicated to the struggle of Covanta workers to win justice in the workplace. This U.S.-based company operates over 30 “energy from waste” garbage incinerators throughout the U.S., with aggressive plans to expand internationally.
Most Covanta incinerators in the U.S. are operated non-union – and workers who seek to organize to win a voice at work are faced with fierce opposition from management. Covanta’s official employee handbook includes clauses severely restricting employee rights, including forms of company policies declared illegal under U.S. labor law for more than 60 years.

Covanta Workers Stand Up in Massachusetts

In May 2008, employees at Covanta’s incinerator in Rochester, Massachusetts voted in a government-supervised election for representation by Utility Workers Union of America Local 369. Since the election, however, Covanta has frustrated meaningful bargaining by demanding numerous intolerable contract proposals, including:

• Work rules prohibiting any solicitation or distribution of “unauthorized” material anywhere on “company property” or on “company time” – a type of anti-union rule illegal under U.S. labor law for more than six decades
• A rule forbidding employees from providing unspecified “information” about the company to “media representatives, governmental officials or other person,” including any “external attorney” or “investigator,” without management’s approval
• A rule providing that employees may be terminated for any “breach of confidentiality,” which is defined in Covanta’s handbook even to include “salaries, wages, and other forms of compensation”
• A demand that workers may be terminated if they “act in a manner that causes harm to . . . the Company’s interests [or] reputation”
• A rule providing that employees may not add documents to their personnel files – contrary to a provision of Massachusetts state law

Although the company withdrew these proposals from the bargaining table in September 2008, they still remain as official company policy in Covanta’s handbook at the Rochester facility.

Covanta’s Bargaining Tactics

In addition to proposing unlawful work rules, in February 2009 Covanta announced that employees at the Rochester plant would no longer receive a long-standing annual bonus – amounting to a significant pay cut for these employees – and explicitly linked loss of the bonus to employees’ decision to elect union representation.  On February 9, 2009, Covanta issued a notice to employees stating “the corporate bonus you have received in the past is not available to employees who are in bargaining units represented by unions.”

Covanta’s bargaining tactics carry all the hallmarks of one of the worst features of modern U.S. labor relations: anti-union employers seeking to thwart employees’ decision to elect union representation by dragging out negotiations with unreasonable contract demands.

Covanta’s policies are especially brazen, since some are clearly illegal. Work rules similar to Covanta’s against employee solicitations or distributions anywhere on “company property” were declared illegal in a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1945.

Covanta’s rule prohibiting employees from providing information to “outside representatives” without management’s permission is contrary to longstanding decisions upholding employees’ right to publicize labor disputes to the news media, customers, and the public. Covanta’s “confidentiality” policy in its handbook conflicts with NLRB decisions holding that employees have a right to discuss their wages with co-workers, labor unions, and others.

Covanta employees at the Rochester, Massachusetts facility are fighting back – by rejecting the company’s unfair proposals at the bargaining table, and by challenging  Covanta’s conduct before the appropriate law enforcement agencies .

In February 2009, the National Labor Relations Board announced that it has authorized a nation-wide complaint against Covanta challenging illegal work rules in the company’s handbook at its U.S. facilities.  In addition, a charge filed by the Union over Covanta’s termination of the annual bonus for Rochester employees is currently  under investigation by the NLRB.

In April 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations against Covanta for violating fire safety rules and for “maintaining” electrical equipment with duct tape and cardboard.  The citations – based on an October 2008 inspection of the Rochester plant requested by these workers’ union – found that Covanta had improperly stored oxygen and fuel gas cylinders side-by-side on a welding cart with no barrier between them.

The Union is also working to publicize Covanta’s anti-worker conduct in communities where the company operates facilities – and where it is developing new ones.

News about Massachusetts workers’ campaign for justice at Covanta will be posted here frequently. Please visit often.