This thing has occasioned an untoward measure of shock, for the
fact is the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do provide for it,
see Rule 34, in appropriate circumstances--the argument should be
whether the circumstances are appropriate.
MacN
On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Secret Squirrel wrote:
> From:
> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/nwa-f11.shtml
> Date: 2/14/00
> Time: 8:41:33 AM
> Remote Name: 205.188.192.174
>
> Comments
>
> WSWS : Workers Struggles : Airlines
>
> Action against dissidents in airline contract
> struggle
>
> US court orders seizure of Northwest flight
> attendants' home computers
>
> By Jerry White
>
> 11 February 2000
>
> Use this version to print
>
> Northwest Airlines last week began
> court-authorized searches of the home
> computers of flight attendants whom the airline
> suspects organized a sick-out over the New
> Year's holiday. Two computer forensic experts,
> hired by Northwest, seized the computers of a
> rank-and-file flight attendant who operates a web
> site and electronic bulletin boards, and copied
> the hard drives from the computers of 21
> individuals, including private e-mail messages.
> The investigators also spent two hours searching
> computers at the Bloomington, Minnesota offices
> of Teamsters Local 2000, which represents
> Northwest's 11,000 flight attendants.
>
> Last month, after a high number of sick calls
> from flight attendants forced the company to
> cancel flights over New Years, Northwest sued
> the union and individually-named flight attendants,
> alleging they had violated federal law by
> orchestrating a sick-out. US District Judge
> Donovan Frank in St. Paul, Minnesota agreed
> and issued a temporary restraining order
> prohibiting Teamsters Local 2000, its leaders
> and specific flight attendants from encouraging or
> participating in “sick-outs” or other illegal job
> actions. The judge gave Northwest the right to
> seek evidence relating to the job action, including
> searching through the e-mails of 43 individuals,
> well beyond the number of people named in the
> original lawsuit.
>
> The company has particularly targeted two
> dissident flight attendants, Kevin Griffin of
> Honolulu and Ted Reeve of North Hollywood,
> California, who operate web sites and electronic
> bulletin boards that have been critical of both the
> company and the union. Flight attendants have
> been fighting for a new contract since September
> 1996 and are anxious to recoup concessions that
> the union granted to the now highly profitable
> airline earlier in the decade. Last August, flight
> attendants used Internet forums to organize the
> overwhelming defeat of a contract proposal
> endorsed by Local 2000 and Teamsters General
> President James Hoffa.
>
> Northwest accuses Griffin and Reeve of inciting
> the alleged job action. The company's attorneys
> cited anonymous postings calling for a sick-out
> on Griffin's message board
> nwaflightattendants.com during the request for a
> temporary restraining order. These messages
> were usually followed by urgings from Griffin that
> participants not advocate illegal activities.
>
> Griffin, a veteran Northwest flight attendant, was
> forced to surrender his Packard Bell desktop and
> Fujitsu laptop to investigators from the firm of
> Ernst & Young last week. The two examiners
> flew to Hawaii from their Washington DC and
> Texas offices to confiscate the machines.
> Afterwards Griffin said, “I didn't think they had
> the right to come and get your home computer.”
>
> Jon Austin, a spokesman for Northwest,
> defended the search, saying, “In the age we live
> in, the normal course of discovery includes taking
> depositions, producing documents and these
> days more than ever looking into the content of
> computers. So many documents and
> communications these days are purely electronic
> in nature,” he said.
>
> The threat of court-authorized searches of home
> computers has already had its desired effect.
> Postings to Griffin's web site have slowed down
> significantly. Of those who aren't afraid to
> comment in the open forum section of the web
> site, a much smaller percentage of the writers
> are identifying themselves, Griffin said. “It's like
> they are running scared, with good reason,” he
> added.
>
> Reeve said the judge's order means that he must
> be particularly cautious about what information
> he posts on his own site, “lest the company
> accuse him of supporting a sick-out and
> therefore violating the district court's order.”
>
> Free speech advocates denounced the
> searches. “This kind of precedent could have a
> very chilling effect on the exercise of speech
> rights, and could set a very bad precedent for
> privacy,” said Jerry Berman, executive director
> for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a
> leading privacy rights organization based in
> Washington DC.
>
> “If Northwest succeeds in gaining access to the
> hard drives of the home computers of its
> employees, it will certainly put a chill on the uses
> employees everywhere make of their home
> computers,” said Beth Givens, director of the
> Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego.
>
> The concern for democratic rights was not
> echoed, however, by the flight attendants' own
> union, Teamsters Local 2000. On the contrary,
> earlier this week the Teamsters officials entered
> into a deal with Northwest and the federal court
> that paves the way for the continued persecution
> of the rank-and-file flight attendants.
>
> On Sunday, February 6, Northwest Airlines and
> Teamsters officials reached an agreement that
> suspended legal action against the union and
> halted the discovering proceedings against 19 of
> the 21 individuals named in the lawsuit—all
> officials in the local union. The temporary
> settlement does not apply to Kevin Griffin and
> Ted Reeve, who were not even invited to the
> settlement talks.
>
> The following day Judge Frank gave his approval
> to the deal and ruled that legal action against the
> union would be suspended while negotiations for
> a new contract continued. The judge also ruled
> that if a settlement were reached and ratified by
> union members, Northwest's lawsuit would be
> dismissed. But if flight attendants violated the
> ban on job actions, or if negotiations collapsed
> and a legally-sanctioned strike was threatened,
> the lawsuit could be restarted.
>
> Under the settlement Griffin and Reeve, who
> were not represented by union attorneys
> because they are not Teamsters officers, are still
> subject to the company's discovery efforts and a
> possible injunction if the restraining order is
> violated. They face the threat of potentially
> massive fines at the very least, if not
> imprisonment. In addition Northwest has filed a
> lawsuit in Honolulu in an attempt to identify
> anonymous writers who have allegedly libeled
> company officials on his web site. The two
> defendants face a February 15 hearing before
> Judge Frank.
>
> The Teamsters bureaucracy undoubtedly
> welcomes the efforts to suppress their members'
> use of the Internet. Since organizing the e-mail
> campaign that led to a 69 percent defeat of the
> contract last summer, these web sites have been
> the focus of continued rank-and-file opposition to
> the union's efforts to impose a pro-company
> contract.
>
> The Local 2000 leadership has rejected the
> demands of workers on the web site as too
> radical. Local president Billie Davenport
> denounced the dissidents, saying, “I don't want
> this union to run on the voices of a small minority.
> Don't think that what 300 to 400 members are
> screaming for is what 11,000 members want.” A
> former local leader, Mollie Reiley, added, “We've
> got a group advocating anarchy.”
>
> Davenport said Monday that the union complied
> with the court's order and never tried to disrupt
> Northwest's flight operations and never would
> without the permission of the National Mediation
> Board. Asked by a newspaper reporter from the
> Minneapolis-based Star Tribune why she did not
> fight harder against the searching of home
> computers, she said the union had nothing to
> hide and “we believe there was enough privacy
> protection.”
>
> While the union agreed to suppress job actions
> by its members, at the same time it collaborated
> with the courts to deny workers their right to due
> process. Neither the union nor the court even
> notified Griffin and Reeve that they were named
> in Northwest's lawsuit, and therefore the workers
> have had no opportunity to defend themselves.
> Nor were they allowed to participate in a January
> 7 telephone conference in which the union
> agreed that the temporary restraining order be
> extended to February 19.
>
> Both workers are pursuing legal action against
> the trampling of their First Amendment rights,
> and are seeking to present their case to the
> appeals court. Their attorney, Barbara Harvey,
> said, “A grave injustice has been done to these
> two individuals, because the order is a blatant
> case of restraint of speech that has historically
> been forbidden.”
>
> http://www.nwaflightattendants.com/forum1/
>
>
>
