I continued to be amazed by the lack of publicity the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is receiving. For those of you not in the loop, the bill has passed the House and the direction in the Senate still appears to be dicey at best.. For the best updates from an employer's perspective, turn to the Union Free Employer blog managed by KMB's Seth Borden...
For those of you who currently enjoy all the benefits of the current NLRB regs, here's Seth's rundown of what you would lose if the bill makes it to law:
- the law will eliminate the current guarantee of a free and democratic, government-supervised secret-ballot election for employees to decide whether or not to be represented by a union;
- the law would require an employer to recognize a union as the exclusive representative of all the employees as soon as the union presents cards signed by a majority -- whether or not the employees understood what they were signing;
- the law will do away with the pre-election campaign period, and curtail employer "free speech" rights, preventing employees from obtaining balanced information and viewpoints about union representation before the employees are forced to choose;
- the law would inject the government into the collective-bargaining process, allowing arbitrators to impose a two-year contract on employers if private negotiations do not produce one within 120 days; and
- the law would greatly increase financial penalties against employers only for interfering in the organizing process (e.g., triple back-pay awards for employees, civil penalties of $20,000 per violation, etc.)...
Need anything else to determine your take on the EFCA? Still waiting to hear the battle cry go out from corporate America, but no one seems very engaged to this point. Also, you have to love the timing of the Circuit City "rightsizing" layoffs in conjunction with discussion of the EFCA, spun here by a pro-EFCA individual, then lamented by Borden here.
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