In another legal victory for Atlanta 8M and 96B local union members involved in the 1993 strike against American Signature, the National Labor Relations Board found American Signature and Quebecor, its successor owner, liable for back pay to the unfair labor practice strikers.

Attorney Thomas D. Allison of Allison, Slutsky and Kennedy of Chicago said this latest decision is on top of the $2.275 million in back pay which GCIU members of the Atlanta and Lincoln, Neb., locals received last year as a result of the first stage of the American Signature litigation.

Allison said that a number of factors make back pay difficult to estimate.

GCIU locals 8M and 96B and Lincoln locals 221M and 543M struck American Signature over unfair labor practice issues in April 1993. Members of locals 221M and 543M ended the strike in May 1993. Members of locals 8M and 96B in the company's Atlanta plant made an unconditional offer to return to work on Nov. 23, 1996.

The earlier back pay award by Administrative Law Judge Howard I. Grossman covered back pay to 19 GCIU members who were illegally laid off in Atlanta for union activity when American Signature took over the plants in 1992; to 438 members in Lincoln who were not immediately called back to work after the strike there; and 110 former strikers in Atlanta as a result of American Signature's refusal to reinstate them from Nov. 23, 1996, to Jan. 22, 1997, when American Signature sold the plant to Quebecor. Quebecor closed the plant in late 1998.

The most recent NLRB decision, which upheld most of the earlier ruling by ALJ Lawrence W. Cullen, was delivered by John C. Truesdale, Wilma B. Liebman, and Dennis P. Walsh.

The NLRB panel found that:

• Quebecor's purchase of the plant on Jan. 22, 1997, did not extinguish the duty to offer reinstatement to the former strikers. The NLRB panel found Quebecor to be a legal "successor" to American Signature's obligations to the strikers under the 1973 Supreme Court decision Golden State Bottling Co. v. NLRB.

• As a result, the board said, American Signature and Quebecor are jointly and severally liable for back pay to the Atlanta strikers from Nov. 23, 1996 – the day of the unconditional offer to return to work – to Quebecor's shutdown of the Atlanta plant in late 1998. Since American Signature already paid to Jan. 22, 1997, the back pay issue runs from that date to the plant closing date by Quebecor.

• Quebecor illegally refused to provide information that locals 8M and 96B had requested and needed to properly represent the bargaining unit employees.

Allison noted that the union tried to settle the case before it went to hearing, "but Quebecor's refusal to put any money into the settlement ultimately torpedoed our settlement efforts. The board's decision further confirms the appropriateness of the international union's willingness to stand behind the strikers in Atlanta in their efforts to get some justice after a difficult three-year unfair labor practice strike."