New Study Destroys Union Intimidation Myth As Specter Considers "Compromise"

Even as Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has been wooing new Democratic Senator Arlen Specter over a "compromise" version of the Employee Free Choice Act, a new study shows that Big Business's fear-mongering over union intimidation is groundless.

A University of Illinois study (admittedly union-subsidized) looked at the way majority sign-up provisions that allow workers choice over how to form a union were applied in the public sector where they're allowed, as in Illinois. As Illinois Progress reported:

Big business and anti-labor legislators love to trot out the claim that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) effectively "strips workers" of a secret ballot election, thereby opening up the door for union intimidation. Of course, this is a gross distortion of the bill. Both forms of unionization -- majority sign-up and elections -- are currently allowed under federal labor law and would be preserved under EFCA. The bill simply gives workers the "choice," rather than their employer. Critics also conveniently ignore the evidence of rampant intimidation by employers during extended election campaigns.

But is there central contention even correct? Does card check lead to union coercion? The recent experience of Illinois workers suggests not in the slightest.

Since 2003, Illinois labor law has allowed public sector workers in municipal, county, state, and educational institutions to organize a union via a majority sign-up certification process. By submitting authorization cards, petitions, or any other evidence that demonstrates that a majority of the employees wish to bargain collectively with a union, the Illinois Labor Relations Board (ILRB) or the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (in the case of teachers) can certify a bargaining unit without requiring a full workplace election...

Bob Bruno, co-director of the University of Illinois-Chicago's Labor Education Program, got his hands on all of the case data for fiscal years 2003-2009. His findings are astonishing.

In the past six years, 21,197 public sector workers from a wide variety of industries have organized under the new guidelines, with the boards certifying 799 units. While just under 300 petitions were dismissed because the union failed to achieve majority support, literally zero petitions were thrown out because of labor coercion.

Meanwhile, the evidence about employer intimidation of workers trying to form a union is overwhelming. As the Campaign for America Future reports in its myth-busting brief (after shredding the bogus argument that the bill takes away the secret ballot):

Myth No. 2: The Employee Free Choice Act would expose workers to intimidation by unscrupulous union organizers

All reliable evidence suggests otherwise. Since the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, the NLRB has found 42 cases (or about one case every 2 years) involving intimidation and fraud in the collection of authorization cards. This contrasts with the epidemic of corporate lawlessness under the current system of union recognition in the United States. Every year for the past two decades, according to National Labor Relations Board data, over 20,000 workers have been awarded back pay because employers have interfered with their freedom to choose a union and bargain collectively. Workers are fired for choosing unions in one quarter of all organizing campaigns. In contrast with corporate scaremongering, the empirical evidence demonstrates that coercion is a problem when workers try to choose a union and bargain for better wages and benefits - employer coercion.

In fact, here's how such intimidation and coercion play out in workers' lives, as recounted in a United Steelworkers video a while ago:

And here's what Billy Mason, an Alcoa worker in Hampton, Virginia found when he and his co-workers tried to form a union to restore their declining real wages and lost benefits -- non-stop employer resistance and intimidation:

To reverse the decline in their wages and gain the freedom to bargain for a better future, Billy and his co-workers began forming a union with the United Steelworkers. But the company fought back with a deluge of misinformation and intimidation. At the beginning of each shift, the company held stand-up meetings bashing the workers' union.

As the election approached, Billy says the company also held sit-down meetings every other day where "the suit and tie people" forced their propaganda against the union on the workers. Although two-thirds of the workers signed cards authorizing the union as their bargaining agent, after two months of the campaign against their union, the workers lost the election.

Despite the loss, the workers continue to try to form a union, but the company stopped them from hand billing and interrogated workers. Billy's manager told him he was "going to destroy the company" by supporting the union. After the election, Billy was suspended without pay for two weeks. The union took his case to the National Labor Relations Board and Billy was awarded his back pay. Despite an atmosphere of fear, he continues to organize and fight for the right to bargain for a better future for his family and his coworkers:

"I believe the rights we have were fought for, people shed blood and people died, and I'm not going to let those rights be taken away."

Yet it's workers and union organizers who are being accused of intimidation, with only a relative handful of proven cases against the unions over the decades, compared to nearly 30,000 confirmed cases each year against businesses. Worse, it's that sort of glib right-wing myth-making about the Employee Free Choice Act that's driving the political fears of Senate moderates who won't support the bill as written. But if majority sign-up is scuttled in any "compromise" legislation, it's small wonder that union officials -- and the thousands of workers and allies lobbying for the legislation in an unprecedented grass-roots campaign -- would react fiercely against that prospect.

As Jill Cashen, a spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, told Bloomberg News: "Card-check is not negotiable for workers in the private sector."

In fact, while so many cartoonish "horror movie" caricatures of the legislation have been launched by right-wing smear merchants, perhaps supporters of the legislation deserve a chance to fight back with a cartoon of their own. So the Center for American Progress's Action Fund has created an animated video, "How Not to Join A Union." This one, though, has facts, not myths:

Comments

[levee]

Ownership class talks about its entrepreneurialship as if it invented pasteurization or cured smallpox. This is the myth. Owners are only the people with the circumstance to own. They are not the pioneers. Hell, GE would have us think they invented the light bulb, and Merck thinks they cured polio. It ain't so. We are all beneficiaries of the great people and the great ideas and only propaganda would have you believe that the worker is not entitled to his fair remittance.

[CaveatMagnusFrater]

Remember. Look for the union label.

[EFCANOW]

New Study Destroys Union Intimidation Myth As Specter Considers "Compromise"

THE REAL Scam is That Both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and former Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis, are the SCAMMERS Promiting ANTI - EFCA Propaganda in their attempt to TAKE OVER The Republican Party!

The Hill :EFCA war spills onto Twitter

The group, operating in apparent association with a primitive website called http://www.thetruthaboutefca.org/ links to a pro-EFCA petition in its Twitter feed,

Its NOT A CON or a SCAM - Just A Clever Move by EFCANow Twitter feed to broadened its reach well beyond the 2,274 followers it has on the popular micro-blogging site. In fact, by adding the names of two prominent EFCA opponents, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who boasts more than 238,000 followers, and former Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis, who has 8,000 followers of his own, the pro-EFCA group’s message reached those who follow two anti-EFCA activists.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/efca-war-spills-onto-twitter-2009-05-04.html



Tom Harkin aims for Arlen Specter EFCA compromise

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22158.html

[Moose49]

Thanks for keeping up the drumbeat, Art.

As you point out, it's not unions that have the power to fire you. It's not unions that can cut your pay, change your hours, or shift you into a different job. It's not unions that have the power to make every minute of your working life a living hell.

Of course, theoretically, management doesn't have that power either when it comes to union organizing. But they use it anyway, knowing the odds are they won't face any consequences whatsoever and that if they do, it will be years later and a tiny cost of doing business.

[LeftRight]

THANK you for pointing out the facts of union vs employer intimidation!! I've been pointing it out myself, but no one seemed to be picking up on that!

I WOULD like to suggest one improvement to the EFCA.... I can understand that some people just don't want to join a union, and so while a majority should be able to get the union that they want, the minority should be allowed to stay out of it, even going so far as not paying dues if they don't want to! In other words, closed shops are ANTI-democratic!

[Biffmeister]

Excellent article pointing out the fallacy of union intimidation.
With Democrats like Specter who needs enemies. Any compromise on card check is intended (by big business) to render it ineffective. Let's run a real Democrat in Pennsylvania, seat Franken, and with a few other Senate changes we can pass EFCA (as is) and health care.