News & Commentary
Big Labor Versus Workplace Democracy
by Michelle D. Bernard
October 31, 2008
Townhall.com
True workplace democracy, in which workers vote about whether to join a union, is at risk. Karen Mayhew, who works for Kaiser Permanente in Portland, found herself stuck in a union against her will. The Service Employees International Union didn't win an election. All it had to do was browbeat enough employees to publicly sign a union card.
Federal law requires a government-monitored election before any company can be forced to recognize a union, but Kaiser decided to accept the signed cards. Mayhew complained to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and won a settlement requiring a secret-ballot election before Kaiser would recognize any union. Unfortunately, Democrats are pushing the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, which would make union elections a thing of the past. Kaiser's approach would become federal law, with mandatory recognition if a union collected cards from a majority of workers. No employee in America would be guaranteed a vote on joining a union.
Organized labor is frustrated. The proportion of workers who belong to unions peaked in the 1950s. Today just 12 percent of the American workforce is unionized. Only among government employees are unions growing.
Organized labor has been losing its hold over workers because the economy is evolving. Workers increasingly recognize that cooperation rather than confrontation between employers and employees is necessary to increase productivity and flexibility. High-cost, antiquated work rules damaged America's manufacturing industries. A new approach is necessary to succeed in today's global economy.
Unfortunately, "change" is not a concept that labor organizers believe in. The results have been clear as employees increasingly reject calls for unionization. If unions collect signed cards from 30 percent of workers, a secret-ballot election must be held. But Big Labor typically loses if it only collects the minimum number of cards, so union operatives rarely call for an election unless they get far more than a majority of cards. Even then, they lose nearly half of the votes.
The problem is the message. Unions try to redistribute a shrinking economic pie rather than expand the pie. That wasn't a good approach in the old industrial economy. It's an awful strategy in today's global economy.
But union officials have a different diagnosis. The problem is elections.
In the view of labor organizers, secret ballots are unfair. Companies can make the case against the union. Employees are protected from intimidation. Workers have free choice. Too many times they vote the "wrong" way.
The obvious answer is to stop employees from voting. Bruce Raynor of the union UNITE HERE said simply: "There's no need to subject the workers to an election." Providing intellectual cover for this Soviet-style approach was the Nation magazine: "Simple recognition when a majority of workers sign cards is a more democratic process" than holding an election. Black is white. Voting is undemocratic.
The solution to labor is called "card check." If unions can convince a majority of workers to sign up, the union wins. No vote is necessary.
Labor claims that companies intimidate outspoken labor activists, but the NLRB finds few cases of retaliatory firings. Real intimidation comes from union activists, who routinely pressure workers to sign up. Organizers often deceive employees as well, saying that the cards are only requests for information.
Worker complaints are legion. Female employees appear to be particular targets for intimidation. For instance in a case against the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, housekeeper Faith Jetter filed a court declaration detailing union harassment: calls to her home, pressure to sign the card, and of organizers seeking personal information on her and misleading other employees on the meaning of signing. She explained: "If this union was going to come into the workplace, I would absolutely want to have a secret ballot election so that me [sic] and my fellow employees could vote our consciences in private, without being pressured by the union representative. I would also want to hear all sides of the story, not just the union's side."
But that's not what labor organizers want. Mark Mix of the National Right to Work Committee warns that "Without even the limited protections of secret ballot elections, card-check allows aggressive unions to acquire monopoly bargaining privileges in an environment that makes it nearly impossible for employees to say ‘no' to unionization."
Workers have a right to join a union. But they also have a right not to join. The best way to determine what workers want is to let them vote. Congress should reject the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, which is an attack on workers' basic right to choose.
6 Comments
Scott Lynch | November 3, 2008, 6:27pm | #
If the Wealthy Unions (meaning all of them) spread enough money around the Congress and Washington, this bill will go through whether the members want it or not. The right of a free and open vote is a constitutional right, and should never be abrogated by a group which continues to exploit both those living close to party and the Washington hacks who cctinue to stand on the side of the Unions. Justice has left Wash DC
Marcus | November 6, 2008, 6:21pm | #
Bernard makes some interesting (an non factual) assertions about the organizing process. I'd like to hear why her freind "never wanted to be in a union". Her claim that business dosent use the process in place, to intimidate those who try to organise,an activity protected by law,is ridiculous. There is a large amout of evidence for it.
Unlike Big business interests and much of the chattering class, workers dont want government to keep a thumb on the scales for them. Id like to hear Michelle Bernard argue against card check with TRUE facts, not question begging asertions that she lifts straight from right wing talking points.
Christine Charles | November 9, 2008, 7:54pm | #
“Card Check” is an assault on our right to choose. Unions should be ashamed for supporting this tactic.
Such behavior is a disgrace to the redish-orange, sweaty faces of the iron miners I saw as a child. Iron miners whose dignity was restored through their unions during the 1950’s. A disgrace to the union construction workers who have worked on projects I have designed. How shameful…….
The pendulum always swings. I have seen the benefits unions provide. I have challenged the abuses unions have practiced. “Union Proud” is a wonderful slogan. Unions should live by it, not just recite it………
Live by it – out in the open…….. Vigorous and vocal discussion should be advocated and allowed for all – employer and employee alike; and a secret vote must be required before a new union can be formed…….
For every Karen Mayhew at Kaiser Permanente who has felt the aggressive pressure to unionize; I know of a construction worker who was intimidated by his union bosses, or women who have worked at Wal*Mart and were intimidated into working off the clock and through their rests breaks.
Why is it that in some industries labor relations can be so contentious? Who is responsible for this behavior?
Is organized labor losing its hold over workers because the economy is evolving? Probably.
Are workers increasingly recognizing that cooperation rather than confrontation between employers and employees is necessary to increase productivity and flexibility? Occasionally.
Do high-cost, antiquated work rules damage America's manufacturing industries? Not necessarily. There are two sides to this argument.
Unfortunately, "change" is not a concept that labor organizers believe in. This statement, found in the article above, can be challenged.
As for the “redistribution of a shrinking economic pie”, is it caused by unions, employers, both or others? Also, who is responsible for seeing the economic pie is expanded?
When the brakes hit the economy in the late 1970’s and after an economic correction a fundamental change took place in the economy. A surplus of crude oil in the early 1980’s reduced gas prices and helped spur the housing boom later in the 1980’s. Suburban populations exploded as families built new homes and their communities quickly grew up around them. Retail business growth soon followed.
Discount stores offering convenience and lower prices soon became the engines that introduced convenience and lower prices to the services, restaurant and other sectors of our economy – often creating the large retail centers still with us today.
Population growth and demographics influenced the planning and expansion of our communities. Convenience and service was everywhere.
At home, the weekly Target advertising circular becomes second only to the Sunday comics as America’s most-read newspaper insert, delivering customers information on the newest and best-priced items waiting in stores. –Target Company History
Soon mass mailing merchandizing was here to stay. With it came expanded credit and competition for consumer discretionary spending. Soon we were told success was in having or enjoying one of the season’s or model year’s newest offerings – homes, cars, furnishings, fashions, convenience foods, etc……..
As towns and cities expanded to capacity, businesses soon were competing over a static population needing to provide additional goods and services or lower prices to their customers as they sought to continually expand their same store sales.
The quest for lower prices soon saw business looking beyond our shores for the manufactured goods they sold. Was it antiquated, high cost work rules that brought about this transformation? Partly.
However, the cost of wages, health care, other benefits and pensions began to undo the good intentions and promises business had made and rewarded its employees with for the commitment, quality and productivity they received in return. The global economy was beginning to take its toll on the manufacturing sector of our economy. Who is to blame for this turn of events?
The discretionary spending of the middle class brought low prices and convenience to their back doors. The business models that evolved out of their spending patterns were partly responsible for the loss of their manufacturing jobs – the erosion of the middle class. Both sides should have seen this coming. Cooperation, not confrontation will be needed to rebuild our middle class.
The framework of our sprawling communities, the condition of our aging infra-structure, the cost of health care and its emphasis on treatment and not prevention, the aging of our population have all placed an impossible burden on business and on our citizens.
Business can not compete unless the global playing field is leveled – no matter how much more productive the American worker is than those of other nations. Families are often one major car repair or illness from financial ruin. Jobs are needed, good paying jobs, to create the financial means to ensure our nation’s stability and security.
Are we looking to unions for leadership? Hopefully for some……. Free markets need to invest in new technologies and in people. Challenge, cooperation and new technologies must go hand in hand. We need to become more than just an economy of consumption once again.
Students today can graduate with engineering, computer science or other technical degrees and be faced with huge student loan balances and the prospect that the jobs they are seeking can be outsourced and performed for much less elsewhere. Is their preferred career choice worth the risk?
Business needs to lead. As an example, oil companies need to become energy companies. Others need to follow their example. Re-thinking, re-tooling and challenging the best and brightest of our youth - creating good new jobs and opportunities. Why wait for unions to reshape the workforce? Now is the time to create the desired jobs of tomorrow.
We have the resources and the creativity. We need to begin using them wisely today.
AP: There's Oil in That Slime (2007-11-30)
STEVE KARNOWSKI Associate
The 16 big flasks of bubbling bright green liquids in Roger Ruan��s lab at the University of Minnesota are part of a new boom in renewable energy research.
Driven by renewed investment as oil prices push $100 a barrel, Ruan and scores of scientists around the world are racing to turn algae into a commercially viable energy source.
Some varieties of algae are as much as 50 percent oil, and that oil can be converted into biodiesel or jet fuel. The biggest challenge is slashing the cost of production, which by one Defense Department estimate is running more than $20 a gallon.
"If you can get algae oils down below $2 a gallon, then you��ll be where you need to be. And there��s a lot of people who think you can," said Jennifer Holmgren, director of the renewable fuels unit of UOP LLC, an energy subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc.
Researchers are trying to figure out how to grow enough of the right strains of algae and how to extract the oil most efficiently. Over the past two years they��ve enjoyed an upsurge in funding from governments, the Pentagon, big oil companies, utilities and venture capital firms.
At the University of Minnesota, Ruan and his colleagues are developing ways to grow mass quantities of algae, identifying promising strains and figuring out what they can make from the residue that remains after the oil is removed.
Ruan��s researchers grow their algae in sewage plant discharge because it contains phosphates and nitrates �� chemicals that pollute rivers but can be fertilizer for algae farms. So Ruan envisions building algae farms next to treatment plants, where they could consume yet another pollutant, the carbon dioxide produced when sewage sludge is burned.
Unions may become even less relevant if business evolves to meet the challenges of our global economy and begins investing more in new technologies and in a new evolving workforce. Creating new, good paying jobs that will help re-build our middle class will once again produce the discretionary income needed for all to thrive.
Karen Mayhew | November 13, 2008, 9:40pm | #
Hey Marcus, as the individual mentioned in this article, you know nothing of which you speak. Fact is unions want the EFCA because it's the only way they can increase their ranks in our evovling economy. Ms. Charles underscores this in the final paragraph of her post seen above. The true fact is this:
EFCA takes away the right to a private non confrontational vote for or against unionization.
I implore you Marcus to ask yourself this question: Why is it perfectly okay to the union brass to inflict this abhorrent legislation on the workers of America, yet if a shop wants to REMOVE their union, they must do so through the secret ballot election process? It's hypocracy that takes my breath away.
Can you realistically, without union talking points, make the argument for the Employee Forced Choice Act? It's the most ridiculous anti Freedom legislation proposed in recent memory.
eamon | March 11, 2009, 7:26pm | #
are you aware that people organize by card check now and have ever since the Wagner act was signed more then 60 years ago, and in the beginning, card check was the most common way to seek recognition. The real difference is that the boss will no longer be able to hire thugs to force people to vote no. It happens all the time. The NLRB has sustained 60,000 complaints against employers for coercion in recent years. Studies prove, if left to thier own devices, most workers would chose to be in a union, I know this is a right wing echo chamber, but that is the fact.
Karen Mayhew | August 26, 2009, 12:03am | #
To Eamon:
Only a union lackey, threatened, would take the vivid real experience of an individual excercising her rights and announce a right wing echo chamber.
Look up, in the sky, it's your tinfoil hat.
toad...