U.S. unions win in ruling on temporary workers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- In a major victory for U.S. labor unions, the National Labor Relations Board made it easier Wednesday for the growing legion of temporary workers to join unions at the companies to which they are assigned.

Under the decision, the NLRB said temporary workers could join an existing union at the company they are working at if the firm supervises the employee, such as assigning projects or providing discipline.

For example, a temporary secretary at a law firm whose supervisor is an employee of the temporary firm could not join the union at the law firm. However, if the law firm had its own supervisor oversee the temporary worker, the secretary may be eligible to join the preexisting union at the firm.

The NLRB would decide on a case-by-case basis.

Labor unions welcomed the decision.

The decision "is an important step in addressing the rights of contingent work force employees, who have too often been relegated to second-class status and rights -- if any," AFL-CIO labor federation President John Sweeney said in a statement.

Labor analysts said the NLRB decision was important because firms have been hiring more temporary workers and farming out jobs to contractors to avoid dealing with labor unions and their sometimes costly contracts.

"That could be very significant because it could really affect the use of contingency workers to avoid unions," Dr. Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Massachusetts, said.

However, Chaison predicted companies would not allow temporary workers to be represented by the unions at their firms without a fight.

"I think we can expect challenges to this and we can probably see a lot of contested cases about this," he said.

In its decision, the NLRB, an independent agency of the U.S. government set up to enforce the Labor Relations Act, cited statistics showing that the number of U.S. temporary workers is booming.

In February 1999, nearly one percent of the U.S. work force, or 1.2 million employees, worked for "temporary help agencies," and another 0.6 percent worked for "contract firms," according to the NLRB. Last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that the number of temporary employees would increase more than 50 percent between 1996 and 2006.

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