sham union

Ashley Totten (Mario Van Peebles), a porter who is the titular head of Pullman's sham union, asks Randolph to help start a real one.

Mr. Gould says it "will allow employers to act autocratically with workers" and "is really designed to promote the existence of what used to be called company unions and sham unions."

Local 1974 contended that Local 530 was "a sham union" formed by Mr. DiNapoli and contractors to take jobs from the walltapers and to avoid paying union-scale wages and benefits.

That would ease, but not abolish, the current prohibition in the National Labor Relations Act, which says that bringing such subjects under committees that have been set up by management turns them into illegal sham unions.

Disney angrily refused to negotiate and insisted his animators were represented by the Federation of Screen Cartoonists, a sham union set up by Disney that was declared illegal by the National Labor Relations Board.

The board upheld one of its own administrative law judges, affirming that Electromation Inc., an Elkhart, Ind., maker of electrical parts, had violated the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 by setting up employee committees that the board said were in effect a "sham union."

The union also contends that the group that won the election, the Coastal Berry Farm Workers Committee, is a "sham union," a front for the company and the powerful Western Grower's Association, a farming industry organization in Irvine, Calif., which has long opposed the union's efforts.