Ask Johanna Moon and Dianne Heeley Why Workers Need Arbitration
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The freedom to form a union and bargain depends on the ability of workers to get a fair first contract. Unfortunately, the nation’s broken labor law gives companies the ability to deny workers a contract with impunity. The Employee Free Choice Act would change that.
The legislation would provide a process to help negotiators reach an agreement through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. However, arbitration would occur under the Employee Free Choice Act only if either side requests it, after months of negotiations.
An article published yesterday by the Associated Press examines the growing corporate attacks on this critical provision, quoting a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official calling arbitration “poison.”
The AP article focuses on workers at Central Maine Power Co., who voted for a union and saw no contract for 18 months. But these workers aren’t alone—52 percent of workers have no contract a year after forming a union and 44 percent have no contract after two years. That means thousands of workers are deprived of their basic freedom to bargain for a better life.
Contract Arbitration: Critical to Workers’ Freedom to Bargain
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One of the critical provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act would guarantee that workers who form a union get a fair first contract. Because right now, writes Catherine Fisk of the University of California-Irvine:
“During the past decade, nearly half of all newly certified unions failed to reach a first contract within a year, and one-quarter of new unions did not have a contract after three years of bargaining.”
Writing in the National Law Journal, Fisk says that by not getting a fair first contract, workers who exercised their right to select union representation
never got what the law guarantees them: collective representation in establishing wages and working conditions.
Hawaii Workers Win Majority Sign-Up
Yesterday, the Hawaii State Legislature overrode the governor’s veto of a bill that gives thousands of workers the freedom to form unions without interference from their bosses.
In a special session, the Hawaii House of Representatives and Senate overrode Gov. Linda Lingle’s veto of House Bill 952, which gives workers the freedom to choose unions through majority sign-up. The bill had passed the House by a 38-10 margin and the Senate on a 20-5 vote, both on May 5.
In addition to the majority sign-up provision, the bill allows for first-contract arbitration if a company and its workers cannot reach agreement after 110 days.
Employee Free Choice Will Ensure Workers Get a Fair First Contract
The freedom to form unions and bargain is critical to workers and to a stronger, fairer economy—but weak law that allows delay and stalling blocks workers from gaining the first contracts that can bring them a better life.
Studies show that when workers vote for unions, fewer than half of them have a contract a full year later—and in more than a third of cases, workers still don’t have a contract two years later. Despite exercising their freedom to form unions against great obstacles, workers aren’t able to bargain for health coverage, retirement security, fair wages and safe workplace conditions.
The Employee Free Choice Act would end this injustice by providing a process to help bargainers reach an agreement through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. Arbitration would occur only under the Employee Free Choice Act if either side requests it, after months of negotiations.
Big Business: Two-Faced Talk on Arbitration
The big-money corporate interests against the Employee Free Choice Act are continuing their disinformation campaign, throwing around misleading rhetoric and bad-faith arguments, seeking to confuse policymakers, the press and the public.
The latest Big Business tactic is to attack the provision of the Employee Free Choice Act that guarantees workers who form a union a fair first contract—a vital provision, because more than 50 percent of workers who form a union don’t have a contract after one year and more than a third still don’t have a contract after two years.
Corporations are crying about the possibility they might have to take part in arbitration with employees if they don’t reach a first contract after three months of talks—even though they’re enthusiastic about arbitration in a wide variety of circumstances where they have the advantage.
Corporate Hypocrisy on Bargaining Highlights Need for Employee Free Choice
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The misleading attacks by Big Business on the Employee Free Choice Act now are aimed at the provision that would guarantee that workers can get a fair first contract. Their scare tactics are not only misleading, they’re hypocritical.
Right now, workers lack a legal means to ensure they get a fair first contract. Recent research shows that even after workers successfully win a union and the ability to bargain, they’re too often blocked from getting a fair first contract. Fifty-two percent of workers don’t have a contract a full year after the election, and 37 percent don’t have a first contract two years after the election. For too many workers, the promise of the freedom to bargain is out of reach because the law doesn’t offer them any help.
The Employee Free Choice Act provides a process to help first-time bargainers to reach an agreement, through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. The reason we need first-contract arbitration is to create an incentive for companies to bargain voluntarily with their workers.
Big Business Likes Arbitration—If It Can Control the Process
Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, desperate in their efforts to kill the proposed legislation that would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions, have come up with another line of attack. They are making a lot of noise over the bill’s arbitration provision. The argument is just another straw-man attempt at gutting legislation that would enable more workers to have a voice on the job. (And one more sign of desperation—to wit, the trotting out of widely loathed figures like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to attack the Employee Free Choice Act.)
Here’s the deal. Even after employees select a union to represent them, they need to bargain a first contract. But there’s no incentive for management to bargain in good faith. The longer contract negotiations are dragged out, the less likely one will ever be settled. In fact, nearly half of workers are denied a first contract, even when they’ve won their union.
