Union resumes picketing against Lutron

U PPER SAUCON TOWNSHIP — Union workers have resumed picketing outside a corporate office building in Upper Saucon Township where Lutron Electronics Co. plans to lease space.

In a one-page document signed Monday by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl in Reading, Lutron, Carpenters Local 600 and a second defendant, Northeast Regional Council of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, reached a "stipulation of dismissal" that enabled the pickets to return.

Attorney Raymond G. Heineman, who represents the union, said Tuesday the stipulation means the judge voided Lutron's temporary restraining order that had prohibited union members from displaying a banner that said "Lutron hurts our community." The union used the banner to protest the hiring of Salukas & White Contracting Inc. of Bethlehem, which the union says is a subcontractor on the Lutron job.

Its owner, Mark J. White, pleaded guilty in February in Northampton County Court to misdemeanor charges of violating state law regarding the hiring of employees, as well as perjury and false swearing.

The three men standing with the banner on Corporate Parkway on Thursday declined to comment but handed a Morning Call reporter a leaflet complaining that the general contractor hired by Lutron, Blue Bell Construction, hired Salukas & White. Part of the union's leaflet reads: "Why won't Lutron insist that the work on their new office building be done by workers getting paid a family sustaining wage."

Lutron officials did not respond Thursday to request for comment. Last week, a Lutron attorney said the company had no knowledge that Salukas & White had been hired.

The lighting-control manufacturer went to court last week to stop the union from picketing.

Heineman said that in the past the National Labor Relations Board has upheld the type of picketing the Carpenters union is engaged in.

"They [Lutron] are taking advantage, and they are saving money based on Salukas & White's treatment of workers," Heineman said.

Salukas & White is a commercial specialty subcontractor dealing in metal stud, drywall and acoustical ceilings. White was charged in October after District Attorney John Morganelli said a grand jury found White misclassifying workers as independent subcontractors — instead of employees — to avoid paying fair wages as well as taxes and workers' benefits such as unemployment insurance. The grand jury found that from 2011 through 2013, White and the company funneled nearly $900,000 to individuals, one of whom was described as a middleman, to pay workers off the books.

White was accepted into Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition, a first-time offender's program that allows him to avoid a criminal record, prosecutors said. He also was fined $7,500.

Lutron plans to move an unspecified number of workers this summer into leased office space at 3477 Corporate Parkway, about four miles from the company's headquarters, which is also in Upper Saucon. The privately held company, whose late founder, Joel Spira, invented the dimmer switch, employs about 1,100 people in the Lehigh Valley.

Source: The Morning Call