The IATSE announced today that the National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against Palace Sports & Entertainment, which is the management company for the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Florida. The St. Pete Times Forum (formerly the Tampa Ice Palace Arena) is home to the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Team as well as numerous concert events and has been proposed as the site for: the Republican National Convention in 2004.
The NLRB has charged the St. Pete Times Forum managers with not recognizing the IATSE as the Union that represents engineers, painters, carpenters, maintenance employees, ice conversion crew employees and Zamboni Drivers.
The NLRB has charged that the St. Pete Times Forum managers have; illegally “promised employees wage increases if they stopped supporting the Union”; illegally “interrogated employees as to their Union activities”; announced an illegal “rule prohibiting employees from talking about the Union on working time, while permitting them to talk about other subjects that are not related to work and to solicit on behalf of other organizations that are not related to work during work time”; illegally “Threatened to discharge employees if they engaged in Union activities”; illegally “interrogated employees about their communications with the (National Labor Relations) Board”; illegally “Threatened employees with unspecified reprisals if they cooperated in an investigation conducted by the (National Labor Relations) Board”; and illegally fired an employee because he “assisted the Union and engaged in concerted activities, and to discourage employees from engaging in these activities.”
In addition the NLRB has charged that the St. Pete Times Forum management “has been interfering with, restraining and coercing employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed” by the National Labor Relations Act and has been illegally “discriminating in regard to hire. . . .or conditions of employment of its employees.”