Free choice for workers or a Pandora's box?
I think unions make a pretty good case that employers have unfairly prevented them from organizing workers -- especially in fast-growing service-sector industries.
The issue of farm worker rights also needs a fresh look and serious debate.
Here's Rep. George Miller (D-CA), quoted in Wikipedia:
Although it is illegal, one quarter of employers facing an organizing drive have been found to fire at least one worker who supports a union. In fact, employees who are active union supporters have a one-in-five chance of being fired for legal union activities.But Miller's proposed fix, the Employee Free Choice Act -- co-sponsored by North Country Congressman Scott Murphy -- has some provisions that deserve a second look.
Sadly, many employers resort to spying, threats, intimidation, harassment and other illegal activity in their campaigns to oppose unions. The penalty for illegal activity, including firing workers for engaging in protected activity, is so weak that it does little to deter law breakers.
Specifically, the EFCA allows unions to organize without a secret ballot. Instead, workers can sign a union card to signal their interest in joining.
Rep. Murphy likens it to casting an absentee ballot in elections.
But voters who want their political preferences kept private can easily opt to cast their ballots in the traditional way -- behind a curtain at their polling place.
It's hard to see how this measure protects workers who don't want to join, but feel intimidated by labor activists and co-workers.
Here's Rep. John Kline (R-Minn), again quoted on Wikipedia:
It is beyond me how one can possibly claim that a system whereby everyone — your employer, your union organizer, and your co-workers — knows exactly how you vote on the issue of unionization gives an employee 'free choice' ...Again...I think advocates of EFCA have made a strong case that the current system has allowed a lot of corporate and management abuse.
It seems pretty clear to me that the only way to ensure that a worker is 'free to choose' is to ensure that there's a private ballot, so that no one knows how you voted.
I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker's democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it 'Employee Free Choice.'
But is this the right fix?
Is there a better way to level the playing field -- and punish cheaters -- while protecting the principle of the secret ballot? Your thoughts welcome.
posted by Brian Mann @ 6/16/2009 07:53:00 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
I see this as little different than signing a nominating petition for a political candidate. Your signature or non-signature of such petitions is a matter of public record. Your friends can still call you meanie names if you don't sign the petition for their guy. You have to be adult enough to make up your own mind and stick with it.
This proposal is a complete farce. It provides an opening for further union intimidation.
Why don't you compare the percentage of union cards signed versus pro-union votes in any subsequent election. Union organizers don't look to call an election until they have well over 60% support in card signing campaigns. This is because they know that a good number of card signers will vote "no".
Should companies be punished more severely for anti-union activities. YES! The situation during organizing has to be handled very carefully. The union orgainzers have the right to lie and make false claims to the employees. The company is the only one who can ultimately deliver the goods on any deal.
It's not a matter of being adult enough. In many plants, factories, etc., you are voting with or against your family, your neighbors, your carpool groups. you also may be an extreme introvert- or the victim of some personal trauma that makes it hard to take a stand. But you have the right to vote your conscience without having to discuss it. It's like the anonymity of people who write on blogs. The people who are bugged by Anonymous are people who are cdonfident, emmpowered, feel safe to express themselves. i admire them, and wish I was the same. Only problem is, for many reasons, I'm not. but I sincerely appreciate the ability to communicate my ideas without being attacked personally. That same extension of individual liberty should be given to employees. Secret ballots are the fairest measure of elections that I know of. Barrring them effectively excludes many folks who don't have the courage, the words, or the experience to speak up. And it's not just being an adult.
As much press as the "secret-ballot" gets, the problem is not with the election itself, but what occurs before and after the election, particularly after. IMO. Unions generally "win" more elections than they "lose"--Unions won 1195 representation elections, or 55.7 percent in fiscal 2007.
In the run-up to the election, the employer’s campaign is generally orchestrated by “union-avoidance” consultants that do a billion-dollar-a-year business. The last thing these union-busting outfits want, with their videos, power-point presentations, and slick-talking advisers, is a debate over the merits of collective bargaining.
Not that there’s much chance of that, since while the employer is holding his captive-audience meetings, the labor organizers are out on the street, barred from company property, barred even, at the company’s say-so, from parking lots and malls generally open to the public.
US labor law currently permits a wide range of employer conduct that interferes with worker organizing. Enforcement delays are endemic, regularly denying aggrieved workers their right to an “effective remedy.” Sanctions for illegal conduct are too feeble to adequately discourage employer law breaking to deter violations.
Penalties for breaching US labor law are so minor that employers often treat them as a cost of doing business—a small price to pay for defeating worker organizing efforts. Under US labor law, an employer faces no punitive penalties and few, if any, economic consequences for violating workers’ right to freedom of association.
Instead, in most cases, a guilty employer must simply complete a two step “remediation process”: restore the status quo ante by recreating working conditions prior to the violations; and post a notice conspicuously in the workplace, such as on a lunchroom or kitchen bulletin board, promising to stop and not repeat the unlawful conduct.
The law’s meager penalties are further weakened by endemic enforcement delays.
Employers often initiate and take full advantage of such delays, in many cases heeding the explicit advice of anti-union consultants. Employers file appeals to the courts, regardless of their merits, rather than complying with administrative orders to reinstate illegally fired workers or bargain collectively. Years more are thereby added to the protracted enforcement process.
Some passages from "Confessions of A Union Buster" by Martin Jay Levitt illustrate these points quite clearly:
The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack. The law does not hamper the process, rather, it serves to SUGGEST manoeuvres and DEFINE strategies.
For union busters, like Levitt, the NLRA is a "union buster's best friend".
According to Levitt, "in its complexity the nation's fundamental Labor law presents ENDLESS possibilities for delays, roadblocks, and manoeuvres that can undermine a union's efforts and frustrate would be members."
Levitt’s first union-busting campaigns introduced him to the most “common strategy among management lawyers.” First, Levitt tells us, “Challenge everything ... then take every challenge to a full hearing ... then prolong each hearing” as long as possible, then “appeal every unfavorable decision.”
According to Levitt there was method to the madness. “If you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers...lose faith, lose interest, lose hope.” Taking away people’s hopes, their aspirations for a better future – that was Levitt’s JOB.
You've raised a good point regarding the success of union elections. As mentioned in one of the previous posts, the unions won't call for an election unless they have a good assurance of winning.
That's just smart business. Unions are in the business of selling membership and representation; and that's big business.
This is one of the hardest issues facing American workers right now, and we need to stop the Unions' deception. Sign a petition to help keep free choice in the workplace at http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/takeaction/index.cfm?ID=85.
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