‘Card Check’ alternatives urged

Editor’s note: This story is part of our effort at The City Wire to provide information about The Employee Free Choice Act not typically provided by traditional media outlets. The proposed act seeks to make unionization easier. Previous stories on The City Wire include: a former union president opposed to the Act; and a broad review of the proposed federal “Card Check” legislation.

Traditional unions are not the only way to enhance worker voice, and the Employer Free Choice Act (EFCA) won’t help union workers because of the global nature of the modern economy.

Or so notes Barry Hirsch, the W.J. Usery Chair of the American Workplace and professor of economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Georgia State University.

“While it is appropriate to encourage enhanced workplace voice and participation, traditional unions are not the only source for enhanced voice and not always the best one. Rather, alternative forms of nonunion voice, some currently prohibited under the NLRA, should be encouraged,” Hirsch noted in this article at The American.

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Hirsch’s concept that the EFCA is not the only gained traction recently when the “Committee for a Level Playing Field for Union Elections” announced its plan Saturday (Mar. 21) to seek a third approach in the union debate.

Costco Wholesale Corp., Starbucks Coffee and Whole Foods Market said the new committee “has come together to open dialogue about a ‘third way’ approach to reform labor law. The Committee’s purpose is to offer a new solution wholly distinct from the recently-introduced and controversial ‘card check’ bill, the Employee Free Choice Act.”

The committee said it “strongly opposed” the EFCA in its current form, and proposed six principles to reform labor laws. The principles include shorter election periods, expedited enforcement of labor law violations, stricter penalties for violations and the guarantee of a secret ballot.

“We believe in and trust our employees, which is neither anti-union nor pro-status quo," said James Sinegal of Costco. “We favor fairness and believe that the passage of a law based on these six principles will ensure a fair opportunity for workers to make an informed choice, with a secret ballot, whether they want a union or whether they wish to retain non-union status.”

THE ‘MARKET TEST’
Hirsch argues that the most fundamental reason for decline of union membership in the past 30 years is the “increasingly competitive and dynamic global economy.” He writes that unionization often places companies at a competitive disadvantage, which means that “union governance is not surviving the market test.”

It’s Hirsch’s opinion that private sector unions, through higher wages and increased benefits, place tough profit pressures on their employers. Further, private sector unions may prevent a company from responding quickly to unanticipated market forces. The profit pressures and slow response times can push companies into bankruptcy.

“Although an oversimplification, this is not too bad a characterization of what necessitated the bankruptcies of major airlines in the early 2000s and automotive bankruptcies more recently,” Hirsch explained.

FAULTY LABOR LAWS
However, Hirsch is an advocate for increasing the worker voice and participation in the workplace, and agrees with unions that the existing labor laws are faulty.

The system is broke on two fronts, according to Hirsch. First, workers are often required to vote on a union in a “highly contentious” environment in which the worker rarely receives good information. Second, workers’ choices are restricted to a traditional union or no representation.

UNION ALTERNATIVES
Hirsch offers several examples of alternative worker choices that the National Labor Relations Board should allow.
• Create discussion forums represented by union organizers and management. The two-sided forums would provide a debate format in which workers would have the chance to simultaneously judge both sides.
• Allow union organizers to have open access to worker e-mails.
• Modify federal restrictions on employer-sponsored work organizations and allow employee groups that discuss terms and conditions of employment, so long as those groups are not unions.
• Shorter campaigns and reforms that might improve the quality and balance of information received by workers.

“Buttressing traditional unionism comes with considerable costs as well as benefits. I would argue that we should instead work to develop alternative avenues for workplace voice in addition to traditional unions,” Hirsch writes. “Ideally, alternative institutions would provide greater voice and participation while creating value-added to the workplace and not placing companies at a competitive disadvantage.”

CARD CHECK EFFECT
Removing the secret ballot from the unionization process, which the EFCA would do, is not a valid alternative, Hirsch writes.

“Either signing or not signing a card is a “public” statement by a worker and can be influenced, perhaps heavily, by peer pressure and a desire not to stick out or behave differently from a norm. It is hard to believe that a secret ballot gives a less accurate representation of a worker’s true preference than signing a petition. Unions typically receive more votes in card checks than in subsequent secret ballot elections,” Hirsch notes. “Reducing the role of secret ballot elections is not the way to more accurately measure workers’ preferences.”

Hirsch said passage of the EFCA will certainly lead to more unions in the American workplace. The resurgence of union governance, however, is hard to measure.

“The magnitude of EFCA effects cannot be known in advance and may be difficult to assess after the fact, but it is unlikely to be minor,” he noted.

FOCUS ON WORKERS
A real public policy debate is needed on the issue of worker rights, but the debate should focus on the worker’s true well-being in the competitive global economy, Hirsch believes. Therefore, the goal of public policy should not be pro-union or pro-management, it should be pro-worker.

“If this goal were best achieved through promotion of traditional unions, then enhancing organizing (in ways other than the EFCA) would be appropriate. If that is not the case, we should look to alternative paths toward worker voice. Unions could evolve to help provide or complement such paths,” Hirsch noted.