Lies, Damn Lies and the EFCA #2 - Intimidation By Employers...

This post is part of a series on the pro-EFCA spin that's out there. If you've read this blog for more than a month, you know how I feel about the ironically-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).  It's a bill that's bad for employees, bad for employers and less-importantly, bad for HR people.  Find good rundowns here, here and here...

If the EFCA is signed into law, your life as a HR pro changes.  Once the EFCA is law, employees would no longer have the right to a confidential vote on whether they want to be represented by a union or not.  If you know how organizing works, you know that today employees express their interest in having a vote by signing what's known as an authorization card.  Once the union gets the necessary number of cards (30% of employees, but most unions shoot for 50% because that's what they need to win the resulting election), an election is called and employees then get the luxury of both unions and employers campaigning for their vote.  Then they vote via a confidential ballot, much like your presidential vote.

Granted, at the very least the card check provision now seems to be temporarily on the ropes, as Democrats who once sponsored the bill are pulling out due to the classic overreach of the act, but I'm continuing the series...

Today's Focus on Lies, Damn Lies and the EFCA - the pro-union spin on Intimidation by Employers:

I just taught the local HR Certification class last weekend, focused on the HRCI module "Employee and Labor Relations".  With that in mind, it served to refresh my take on some of the pro-EFCA being spun by pro-union forces out there.

Case in point - the pro-union, pro-EFCA camp clearly states that there's a need to eliminate the secret election because employers intimidate employees during the election campaign now mandated by law.  The pro-union spin says that because employers can hold as many meetings as they want during the election period, they'll constantly intimidate employees by focusing on doom and gloom and pointing to the fact that the plant could close if the union gets voted in, etc.

Couple of things about this if you haven't been exposed as a HR pro.  First up, the law is pretty clear about what employers can and can't do in the election campaign.  There are laws already on the books regarding this.  To put it simply, employers can't Threaten (we'll close the plant if you vote the union in), Interrogate (who went to the union meeting last night?), Promise (if you vote no to the union, I'll make sure you get a 10% raise), or Spy (sit in a car and see who goes into an off-site union meeting, install cameras in break areas to monitor conversations, etc.).  Put it all together and the company can't TIPS.

What can the company do in their message by law?  They can FOE (share Facts, Opinion and Experiences).  Examples could be as follows:

• Fact - Your compensation and benefits aren't guaranteed to go up if the union comes in.  Everything's negotiable, and those items can go up, but they also can come down.
• Opinion - It's my Opinions that you don't need a union to negotiate on your behalf.  You're going to have union dues deducted from your paycheck for things you already have access to today.
• Experience - My father was a union member for 30 years, and the one time he thought he needed the union in a grievance process, he felt like the union steward didn't care about him, because he wasn't a vocal supporter of the union.

So, contrary to what the union lobby would have you believe, laws are already on the books to cover what an employer can and can't say during the election campaign. 

That's valuable for you to know.  But here's the dirty secret unions don't want to talk about related to what gets said during the organizing process - Unions can say whatever they want during the organizing process, and there's little the company can do about it.  Promises to employees about what the union will get once they're voted in - more wages, more benefits, more premium items - are all a part of the selling process.  Unlike employers, unions aren't restricted regarding the promises they make to get employees to sign an authorization card.  When's the last time you heard of a union taking an Unfair Labor Practice charge (that's the process governed by the NLRB) for outlandish promises made to employees?

That's right, you haven't heard of that, because there aren't laws on the books that really address that.  Employers take the vast, vast majority of unfair labor practice charges, and meanwhile, union organizers can say anything they want. 

That's the current system folks.  Eliminate the right to a secret ballot and the campaign that comes right before it (when the employer can talk to its employees about the promises made by the union organizers), and you've got a system that's going to disappoint the vast majority of employees once the union represents them.

Intimidation by employers?  How about promises made by organizers?  Can we look into that?

Comments

[DG]

Great article and right on the money! The moral of the story is that if the HR Business Partner is truly creating value by enabling effective supervisors (the management boots on the ground) to engage people, then no matter how sneaky a union might be, it cannot take root!

[anti-union HR Guy]

Unions are worthless in all but a few industries. Their tactics are often unfair and not representative of the majority of its members. Even with the lawyers they have hired and the politicians they have paid off to put this bill out, it obviously has so many flaws in it that even liberal Democrats are beginning to see through the smokescreens. Those ultra right-wing union folk are a dying breed; don't they know that the new generation of workers could probably care less about their union agenda?

Todays milennials should come up with their own union that adheres to sensible rules, universal beliefs and agreed on values. It would probably run the old school union guys out of business. Maybe then we'd have a lot more in common and could sit down at the table to really engage in a meaningful existence the way unions and management were meant to co-exist with each other.

[HR Jobs]

Great Article! Just one question @ anti union hr guy, if todays millennial should come up with their own union whats the guarantee that they would adheres to sensible rules, universal beliefs and agreed on values. They would most likely regress to the old school union customs as the precedents there are well camouflaged as successes. Can unions and management ever co-exist with each other?

[Chris]

Sure, unions may be bad for business. But when was business always right?

The deterioration in wages for the high school graduate with no college are directly related to the decline in unionization. Unions slow down businesses; they slow down economic growth. Maybe, just maybe, we need that.

Breakneck speeds of economic growth leave many underprivelidged and underskilled in its wake. Maybe slower growth is better for other measures of societal well-being, such as poverty, health, and literacy. Unions, on average, do secure higher wages. They do provide safer work environments and better support for injured workers.

The tradeoff between speed of economic growth and extent of unionization is worth considering in a society as polarized as the U.S.

[Gary]

Your father had the same disillusioning experience I had. When I was to a layoff, the union disappeared. The leaders' attitude was "better you than me." They cowered away, happy to sacrifice one of their own.

[Travis Smith]

There is so much that goes into a good union-free initiative, which companies need to have considering our President's commitment to the EFCA. I really like your FOE, but I changed it to FLOP in my personal presentations. P is your E changed for the acronym's sake (Personal Experience/Experience). I added the L which stands for LISTEN because that is something supervisors can do. While they may not be able to ask questions, they can make statements and listen for reactions. Also, often times associates will want to tell management and supervisors what's going on, especially if there is a relationship built (while obviously this will not be the case every time, but if it is then a union doesn't have a chance, except through the EFCA).