Union trips up member's trip to India for surgery.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: TAR HEEL TATTLER

This is a story about Carl Garrett's gallbladder--a tale that might have meandered in obscurity from the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the plains of India and back if not for the griping of a Pittsburgh-based labor union. It is a tale of sickness and health, of globalization and collective bargaining. And like many Southern yarns, it is a tale of a lost cause.

Garrett fixes and maintains machines at Canton-based Blue Ridge Paper Products Inc., which is 45% owned by its workers. Saddled with rising health-care costs, the company last year began exploring ways to cut expenses. Someone saw a television report on medical tourists--U.S. citizens who travel to Third World countries to get procedures done for up to 80% less than they'd pay here--and management started looking into it. Garrett, who needed gallbladder surgery, volunteered to be the guinea pig in exchange for a share of the savings.

By September, Garrett had his bags packed for New Delhi. That's when the United Steelworkers union, which represents Blue Ridge's blue-collar employees, put the kibosh on the deal, complaining that workers should not have to travel halfway around the globe to get medical care. To the union, the deal was a change in the company's medical benefits--one that could be made only through collective bargaining.

The dispute escalated when Union...