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Labor Board’s Union Election Process: Neither Free Nor Fair |
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Free and democratic elections? You won’t find them in the U.S. workplace. In fact, a new report shows that when U.S. workers try to form a union under the rules of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), they are operating under a system that more closely resembles the phony “free elections” in authoritarian regimes—those the U.S. government traditionally has condemned.
Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., a University of Oregon political scientist and author of Neither Free Nor Fair: The Subversion of Democracy Under National Labor Relations Board Elections, says:
Anti-union employers are making a mockery of the principle governing American elections. Weak labor laws allow anti-union employers to manipulate the outcome of union elections in a manner that is inherently unfair and undemocratic.
Union-busting activity in the weeks leading up to union elections resembles practices that our government routinely denounces when performed by rouge regimes abroad
He says passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is “critical” to ensuring America’s workers have a truly democratic process in choosing to join a union.
The report, released today by American Rights at Work, comes just weeks after obstructionist Republican senators blocked a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act. Echoing the multimillion dollar corporate propaganda campaign that sought to undermine support for the bill, anti-worker lawmakers claimed the bill would take away workers’ rights to secret ballot elections if employees are allowed to choose to join a union when a majority signed union authorization cards.
That argument, no matter how often it is repeated, is wrong on two fronts. First, the Employee Free Choice Act does not eliminate secret ballot elections. Secondly, under the current NLRB, government-run election process, the report points out there are a
myriad ways in which workers are denied the most basic tenets of democracy…
and in fact, Neither Free Nor Fair
addresses head-on the claim that the NLRB election process guarantees workers a truly secret ballot—the central claim of anti-union advocates who seek to keep the current NLRB system in place….
Instead, the report shows
NLRB elections fail to safeguard workers’ right to keep their opinions private; and that, on the contrary, the NLRB system results in workers being forced to reveal their political preferences long before they step into the voting booth—thus turning the “secret ballot” into a mockery of democratic process.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says Lafer’s report
comes at a time when working families are at the tipping point. Unions are the best anti-poverty, middle-class supporting program in our nation, and are a key to turning around the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. The anti-democratic and skewed system detailed in Lafer’s study clearly does not give workers a free and fair chance to improve their lives by forming unions.
During Senate debate on the Employee Free Choice Act, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) stressed the connection between strong unions and a strong middle class. Clinton pointed out the advantages of belonging to a union:
- Union workers earn, on average, 30 percent more than nonunion workers.
- Union workers are much more likely to receive employer-paid health insurance and participate in an employer-provided retirement plan.
- Union women earn $179 more a week than nonunion women; African Americans $187 more a week; and Latinos $217 more a week. (Get more on the union difference here.)
The report documents how employers:
Deny workers free speech—Although management is permitted to plaster the workplace with anti-union posters, leaflets and banners, pro-union employees are prohibited from doing likewise. Union organizers are banned from entering the workplace—or entering publicly used but company-owned spaces such as parking lots—at any time, for any reason. Employees of the company are banned from talking about forming a union while they are on work time and are banned from distributing pro-union information except when they are both on break time and in a break room.
Use economic coercion and intimidation—When employers speak out, employees always listen carefully for even the subtlest hints as to what kind of behavior will be rewarded or punished. This is all the more true in an economy where so many Americans feel insecure about their economic future.
However, under standard “union avoidance” strategy, supervisors are forced, on pain of termination, to engage each of the people under them in intimidating one-on-one anti-union conversations. Workers commonly report illegal threats being made in these meetings, since there are no witnesses present.
Even without illegal threats, supervisor one-on-one meetings undermine democracy. In these conversations, the person who has the most immediate control over your hiring and firing, promotion or demotion, scheduling, duties, hours and all other aspects of your work life explains why they believe so strongly that a union would be destructive to the workplace.
Ostracize and defame union supporters—The NLRB allows employers to make nearly any type of threatening or derogatory statement to employees, as long as it doesn’t contain an explicit quid pro quo threat. Workers who have earned their way to good standing with the company are often ostracized and belittled by management after publicly asserting their support for the union. In one example, a worker was followed to restaurants on days off by security guards with walkie-talkies. A member of management was assigned to work with her eight hours a day, five days a week, and was told he was there solely to work on her to change her ideas about unions.
Lafer thoroughly deconstructs the so-called “secret ballot” argument employers and anti–worker lawmakers incessantly flog whenever the Employer Free Choice Act is mentioned.
Much has been made about the importance of the secret ballot in NLRB elections. But, as this report documents, the NLRB safeguards the secret ballot in name only.
But this principle has been eviscerated by the NLRB. Federal law allows anti-union managers to force individual employees into repeated, intimidating one-on-one conversations with their personal supervisors that are designed to make employees reveal their political leanings long before election day. “Union avoidance” consultants typically script supervisors’ conversations, train them how to read employees verbal and non-verbal reactions, and have them ask indirect questions without explicitly asking employees how they will vote.
Supervisors often adopt a sophisticated grading system to mark the political tendencies of each of their subordinates; for those whose leanings are unclear, consultants require that supervisors go back for repeated conversations until employees’ political sentiments have been flushed to the surface. Unlike political elections, employee voters have no right to walk away from such conversations or to insist that they don’t want to discuss union-related issues with their supervisor. They can be forced to engage in such conversations daily, or multiple times a day, in an atmosphere of dramatically increasing pressure.
Click here to download a copy of Neither Free Nor Fair.
12 Comments
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The NLRB is like pleading your case to the traffic commissioner: Your answer comes in the mail, is almost always no and they’re not accountable for their reasoning. Victories are hard won and very infrequent.
New words to an old Hank Williams song “Melt your cold, cold heart”
Melt Verizon’s Cold, Cold Heart
Tear down the wall at Verizon, We make this our solemn vow!
Union members at Verizon Shout, Ivan can you hear us now!
We proved a union majority, now bargaining must start!
Recognize our union now and melt your cold, cold heart!
From Long Beach California and on the East coast too,
We have seen union busting and employee coercion too.
We proved a union majority, now bargaining must start!
Recognize our union now and melt your cold, cold heart!
As Workers and Shareholders, We demand our“Say on Pay”
Not to mention our pension that you would take away!
We proved a union majority, now bargaining must start!
Recognize our union now and melt your cold, cold heart!
We will never give up; we will never ever give in.
Greed must be overcome and bargaining must begin.
We proved a union majority, now bargaining must start!
Recognize our union now and melt your cold, cold heart!
David Hurlburt CWA local 9410
If the purportedly vicious tactics of private-sector employers opposing unionization is the basic reason why Organized Labor is pushing for card checks, why is Organized Labor also pushing for public-sector card checks in states like Massachusetts, Oregon, and New Hampshire?
No serious commentator contends that public-sector employers vigorously resist unionization of their employees on a regular basis. Does anyone claim at all claim that public-sector employers in Massachusetts and Oregon are viciously anti-union? Yet the AFL-CIO and its blog have applauded efforts to impose mandatory public-sector card checks in these states. This strongly suggests union organizers’ real problem is with recalcitrant employees, not employers.
Stan Greer
National Right to Work Committee
Stan, Stan, Stan.
Three posts since this one, and there’s one about how the federal government is using a union busting consultant at the GAO. In my own work I’ve seen union busting muscle brought to bear in charter schools that rivals anything you see in the private sector. That includes workers being fired for standing up for themselves. A lot of public employers believe their role in unionization is neutrality. But not all. You’re wrong on the facts.
And you’re wrong on the underlying point, which is that everyone should have an unfetterred right to have a union, whether or not they work in the public or private sector.
To Ed at AFT –
Glad to hear you concede that “a lot” of public sector employers don’t oppose unionization. Maybe soon you can even bring yourself to agree that “most” don’t oppose unionization, and “many” even support it.
Is Dave Moberg an anti-union propagandist? Just four years ago, Moberg wrote this in The Nation: “In the public sector . . . managers rarely oppose unions vigorously, if at all.” If Dave Moberg, one of the most rabidly pro-Organized Labor journalists in America, can acknowledge this fact, then commentors on this blog also should be able to do so.
And Ed, I didn’t say that public-sector employers never oppose unionization. I said “not regularly.” Especially in Massachusetts and Oregon, I don’t think anybody dares to claim that that public employers are waging a “terror campaign,” the term recently used by pro-EFCA Michigan bureaucrat Andy Levin, against pro-union employees. Thwarting such alleged “terror campaigns” is practically the only justification union propagandists make for the EFCA.
Whence, then, the public-sector EFCA’s in Massachusetts and Oregon? You offer no plausible explanation, only vituperation.
Stan Greer
National Right to Work Committee
Stan
So you agree with me that there are public employer who are innapropriately anti union, even if you aren’t ready to concede that these anti union public employers currently reside in MA or OR. That’s a big step for you, maybe you need to sit down, have a glass of water.
I’m going to disagree with you again the facts, in particular as relates to MA and charter schools, where I have some experience. But we could even assume that all employers in these states are currently angels and still thing that majority authorization is the right thing to pass. Lets look again at the exampe of the Bush administration using union busting consultants at the GAO. If we’d wanted to pass labor law like EFCA during the Clinton administration to prevent union busting by the federal government you’d have put much the same argument on the table then as you are now. BUt as we’ve already discussed,, some seven years later we have union busting being done by the federal government. We don’t just advocate for laws to protect workers today, but for today and in the years ahead.
I’ve heard that the best time to plant a tree is fifty years ago. The second best time to do so is right now. THe same logic applies here.
why oh why are you trying to evangelize here Stan? Seriously. Are you a masochist? Do the people who write your paychecks think this is a good use of time? I mean I’d rather have you engaging in a conversation with the AFL than say– offering lollipops to children at recess but still…
Ed, I love your argument! Let’s preemptively eliminate (de facto, albeit not de jure) secret ballots over unionization, even if there’s no evidence at all of employer abuses supposedly justifying the elimination of secret ballots, on the grounds there might be employer abuses someday.
You could use that same logic to justify all kinds of suppression of basic rights, but I guess that doesn’t disturb you.
Finally, contrary to your claim, it’s no “concession” on my part to acknowledge that some public employers sometimes oppose unionization. Look again at my first comment in this thread. The point, which you have steadfastly ignored, is that not even proponents of public-sector EFCA’s cite public employer excesses in opposing unionization as the justification for them. Your supposedly horrific personal experiences notwithstanding.
Anyway, Elana is right, you and I both have better things to do than perpetuating this “debate.” You can certainly have the last word if you want it.
Stan Greer
Stan,
I’m sure you’d be very happy with the doings of the Oregon University System. In the last decade, they have strongly resisted unionization efforts at both Oregon State University and Eastern Oregon University. Of course, this is just where campaigns were launched. God knows, there are thousands of employees on Oregon’s college campuses that would love to be in a union, but can’t risk their jobs trying to unionize. Couple that with the fact that Oregon unions have learned that a union drive at any campus will cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars, and you will realize that OUS is pretty effective at thwarting the will of their employees.
Perhaps you’ll be even more heartened to know that OUS doesn’t quit once it has lost an election. Oh, no. OUS managed to not come to contract terms with the faculty at Eastern Oregon for two years and forced them to stave off a decertification election. And at Oregon State, the graduate employees union faces a situation where the university moves members in and out of the bargaining unit so frequently, that the union often has little idea of who they represent.
But, I am sure you are already mentally composing, all of this only goes to show that secret ballot elections work! Except, again, for those thousands of Oregon public employees who fear speaking out about their desire to join a union. I was just on a campus at an Oregon community college. I talked to at least 30 contingent (part-time, adjunct) faculty. I meet no one who thought a union was a bad idea. In fact, it was universally agreed that a union was needed, but almost all the people I spoke to said that they feared losing their jobs if they were leading the union fight. You see, Stan, they just assumed that the college would refuse to renew their contracts just for saying that they thought a union might be a good idea. they got this idea because of the conservative nature of the college administrators, past anti-union sentiments expressed by the administrators, and by the fact that the college administrators allowed for very little faculty input in any aspect of the college. I can say with confidence that with card check, there would be a union for the part-time instructors on that campus; without it, there may never be.
This is how the election process, that years-long fight with the college, thwarts the will of the employees; denies them their constitutional right to a union, here, in Oregon. Does this answer your question?
Wow Dave, that’s really an amazing story. And it shows the value of card check for public sector workers. Good luck in Oregon!
Dave —
Your comments about the “anti-union” actions of college administrators in Oregon are extremely vague. What, concretely, anti-union actions did these administrators take?
It may come as a shock to contributors to this blog, but many Americans don’t just take a union organizer’s word for it when he says that a unionization campaign hasn’t succeeded because workers fear retaliation, without even quoting the supposedly “anti-union” statements campus authorities have made.
Stan Greer
Stan,
Wow. You write in to ask the pro-labor crowd to provide you with some information about why we believe that EFCA is necessary in states like Massachusetts and Oregon, which you pre-suppose are crawling with union-neutral state administrators. Now, given your affiliation, you could have been hounded off the sight, mocked, cursed, and generally disdained. Instead, I tried to give you a couple of examples of anti-union behavior that I have experienced here in Oregon. I tried to explain that workers who want a union can fear loss of employment when they try to unionize. That fear is especially acute in contingent faculty, which is my area of expertize.
In response you have called me a liar.
I didn’t ask “many Americans” to believe my anecdote about organizing on a college campus. I asked you to believe it. I assumed you asked a good faith question, I gave you a good faith response. You have stated your refusal to believe me unless I provide you with examples of anti-union statements made by administrators. In other words, the thirty-odd conversations I had with workers did not happen until I can somehow prove to you they happened.
Now let me turn the tables just a little bit. Are you honestly trying to tell me (and many Americans, apparently, this cite being a bit more popular than I thought) that you are unaware of public employees fearing for their jobs if they try to unionize? Contingent faculty, who have contracts renewable, or not, every three months don’t fear for their jobs?
Actually, hold on. Let’s have a little agreement, Stan. You continue to believe that I am a liar and I will just go ahead and assume that anything that comes from you needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We are working on two different projects. I have dedicated my life to helping the working people get a little bit more for their labors and you have dedicated your life to stopping guys like me. I stand on the side of the people who made this country great and are fighting every day to keep it that way, you stand on the side of the exploiters. I know I feel good about what I do for a living.