Unions Switch Tactics (J. Bruce Cross Commentary)

On February Feb. 14, 2007, the U.S. House Committee on Education & Labor voted 26-19 along party lines to approve the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act, recently introduced by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., with 232 co-sponsors, including Arkansas Reps. Vic Snyder, and Mike Ross. Miller has introduced this legislation in prior sessions, it has a real chance of passing the House this year with the Democrats in control. Passage in the Senate is also a possibility.
The system in place for the past seven decades, under the National Labor Relations Act, allows employees to vote by secret ballot, very similar to all Americans on Election Day. The independent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) strictly monitors the election process, with the majority of votes cast determining the outcome.
Labor unions, which long supported secret-ballot elections to protect the rights of workers, have grown to disdain the private ballot because, over the last several years, workers have more frequently rejected union representation than their predecessors.
Union membership has steadily declined, and union election success rates have dropped from 70 percent 50 years ago to around 50 percent today. The number of elections held has also declined dramatically. Organized labor lost 326,000 members last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with private sector union membership amounting to only 7.6 percent of the work force.
Labor has responded to this decline by waging corporate campaigns to pressure employers into “card-check” agreements, in which employers agree to bypass the election process if the union presents signed representation authorizations from a majority of the employees. This allows unionization after a majority of workers sign cards — out in the open — stating their intention to join a union. The corporate campaigns, on the whole, have not been successful. Consequently, the unions have taken the fight to Congress.
The union-backed bill would essentially result in the elimination of private-ballot elections in favor of the “card-check” process, which gives aggressive union organizers the opportunity to pressure employees. Workers often sign the authorization cards just so the union organizers will leave them alone. Rep. Miller claimed the act would give “workers the ability to more effectively bargain for fairer wages and benefits and working conditions.” Taking away the employees’ right to vote, thereby subjecting them to union organizer coercion and intimidation, is the actual result. As Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., put it, “Big Labor interests are not even remotely shy about their intent to strip workers of the private ballot so they can advance their own agenda, even though it’s at the expense of democracy itself.”
The proposed labor law would also change the process for negotiating initial collective bargaining agreements. Once an employer is unionized, unions could compel the company to submit to mediation after only 90 days of negotiation. If agreement is not reached after 30 days of mediation, the contract terms will be set through binding arbitration. Initial contracts are almost never reached in 120 days, so government-appointed arbitrators, with no interest in the well-being of the company or the employees, would be determining wages and benefits. Employees will not even be allowed the opportunity to ratify the contract terms. The only winners in this process are the union bosses.
Union leaders claim that the bill is necessary because the election process is too slow and allows employers to intimidate workers into voting against union representation. The truth is that the vast majority of public and private sector workers prefer not to have a union represent them. For example, a recent Harris survey found that 61 percent of union households negatively rated organized labor’s performance. Unions, therefore, should rethink the way they do business to make their services more desirable to today’s work force. They should not push legislation designed to strip voting rights from the very workers they are supposed to serve.
Organized labor is working hard to push the legislation through Congress, with rallies planned throughout the country over the coming weeks. A strong effort is needed by business leaders to convince our representatives to vote against this bill in order to protect Arkansas workers’ right to vote free from intimidation and coercion. Go to MyPrivateBallot.com for more information.
(J. Bruce Cross is a labor and employment management attorney with Cross Gunter Witherspoon & Galchus of Little Rock.)