Unresolved Illegal Firings: Another Reason to Pass Employee Free Choice

by James Parks, Nov 3, 2008

Research by the workers’ rights advocacy group American Rights at Work shows when a worker is fired for supporting a union, it has a chilling effect on the other workers on the job—findings that highlight the need for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

According to the report, for every worker who is illegally fired for supporting a union, some 395 co-workers receive a chilling message: Get involved with the union and you’ll get a pink slip.   

Even when fired workers file complaints, they often don’t get real relief. Between 1999 and 2007, more than 86,000 workers filed unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for being illegally fired by their employer for union activity. Of those, only 11 percent ever received a ruling from the NLRB that they were eligible to get their jobs back. At the same time, 35 percent of workers accepted a settlement from their employer, rather than wait for the long, cumbersome NLRB process to get their jobs back.

The NLRB’s most effective tool to remedy the chilling effect of a firing is to seek an injunction that allows fired workers to return to work without unreasonable delay. But the anti-worker Bush NLRB has sided with management in many of these cases. In fact, the use of injunctions between June 2001 and December 2005 declined by 74 percent since the Clinton administration and 61 percent since the George H.W. Bush administration.

The Employee Free Choice Act would restore balance to the workplace by requiring the NLRB to seek an injunction to reinstate workers when it has reasonable cause to believe their rights were violated. Right now, the law only requires injunctions against violations by unions, creating a blatantly biased tilt in management’s favor.

This reform will send a loud and clear message to others that their job security isn’t on the line for supporting a union, according to American Rights at Work.

Click here to learn more about the research study, The Chilling Effect: Fire One Worker, Send a Powerful Message to the Rest, and here for NLRB’s “Fired Workers” Only Tip of the Iceberg.

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