Lies, Spin and the EFCA - Why Unions Don't Negotiate With Employee Interests As a First Priority...

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...

With Arlen Spector switching parties and Al Franken ready to leave the SNL tour and become a   Democratic Senator, it seems like a good time to start talking about the EFCA again.

So, I'm here today to talk about some of the Spin that comes from the pro-EFCA camp.  Spin point #2 from the pro-EFCA camp goes something like this:  "We're here to negotiate for the employee once the union is voted in, and we need the binding arbitration clause currently in the EFCA because employers don't negotiate in good faith once the union is voted in.  Us?  We're all about the employee, here to solely focus on ensuring you get the best compensation, working conditions and benefits possible.  You're much better with us than without us."

Now, here's the reality.  Everything's negotiable at the table once a union is voted in, and THE FIRST ITEM THE UNION WILL FOCUS ON HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EMPLOYEE.  In fact, the union wants it so bad that they'll gladly give up multiple concessions in other areas to get it.

It's called DUES CHECKOFF.  The union wants it.  The company can provide it.  And if the company is so inclined, the union will gladly give up items like a 401k match, work rules, etc. to get it.  

Dues Checkoff simply means that the company will allow union dues to be automatically withdrawn from an employee's paycheck and direct deposited into the union's bank account.  The union wants it because they don't want to deal with messy items like collections, especially if the union members don't see the value of a union down the road.

So dues checkoff becomes the first item on the union's list.  The smart company knows that and, if they're smart negotiators, will extract meaningful concessions from the union at the bargaining table, usually resulting in a net loss of total rewards for the employee.  If the union doesn't want to give up anything for that, the resulting stalemate could easily pass the 90 day period of bargaining currently provided for in the EFCA before the whole thing is sent to binding arbitration.

Dues checkoff - it does a Union good and is the must-have on the union's negotiating list.  So much so, they'll give up employee friendly items to get it.  What employee wouldn't want to be represented by that type of agent? 

Comments

[John Hollon]

Kris -- Evene though Arlen Spector is changing parties, he says it WON'T change how he feels about the EFCA. He's strongly against it ...

[John-Lee H]

It's interesting note that, in Canada, dues checkoff is compulsory as part of many of the labor relations codes.
(for example, see Alberta:
http://tinyurl.com/c6sdf5 )

It may be the case that some jurisdictions have dues checkoff as compulsory in the US (I'm assuming that the states each have their own LR codes, but I could be wrong).

I have one problem with Kris' argument. It assumes that the interests of the union can easily differ from that of the employee. Surely, a more efficient union that has dues checkoff would have more time and resources to devote to bargaining, grievances, and other employee related issues.

Further, there is ample incentive to concentrate on employee related issues because members of the union executive are voted into their positions. If the union does stray from the path of employee advocacy for selfish means, they better watch out during election time.

This all being said, I agree with you on the card system issue. Secret ballots are the best way to go to ensure fairness and prevent intimidation.

[Wendy Riddler]

More good news.......

May 6, 2009

Obama Tries to Stop Union Disclosure - No more sunshine on how worker dues are spent.
By ELAINE L. CHAO
http://online.wsj.com

Fifty years ago, Congress passed the landmark Landrum-Griffin Act to protect rank-and-file union members from malfeasance by union leaders. Senate hearings had uncovered serious corruption and other unethical practices inside the labor movement, and a bipartisan coalition emerged to shine the light of disclosure on union practices.

Nevertheless, Democrats in Congress and in the executive branch have often attempted to undercut that law's financial reporting and disclosure requirements. Prior to reforms adopted in the George W. Bush administration, for example, one union could get away with reporting a $62 million expenditure as nothing more than "contributions, gifts, and grants to local affiliates" -- with no further explanation. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is already showing that it wants to return to this nontransparent standard of financial disclosure.

Within days of the inauguration, the new leadership at the Labor Department moved to delay implementing a regulation finalized in January that would have shed much needed light on how union managers compensate themselves with union dues. The regulation required disclosure of receipts for expenditures and for the purchase and sale of union assets -- disclosures that would help deter embezzlement. The administration has since moved even more aggressively, initiating proceedings to rescind this rule and others promulgated when I was secretary of labor.

The Labor Department's Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), created to enforce the 1959 law, also recently announced that it would not enforce compliance with the conflict-of-interest disclosure form (the "LM-30" form) that was revised in 2007. Labor's Web site states that "it would not be a good use of resources."

Instead, union managers will be able to file decades-old, less enlightening disclosure forms while the department considers whether to "revise" (i.e., gut) the current disclosure requirements. But what could be a better use of department resources than enforcing the laws under its jurisdiction?

From 2001-2008, the Labor Department secured more than 1,000 union fraud-related indictments and 929 convictions. This enforcement record was accomplished even though the enforcement office accounts for less than 0.1% of the department's budget. OLMS is the lone federal agency with the job of protecting worker interests in how their unions are managed. The last Congress increased President Bush's budget request for the Labor Department by $956 million even as it targeted OLMS for a budget cut.

This repeats the pattern we saw during the last Democratic administration. Under President Bill Clinton, staffing decreased more than 40%. The number of compliance audits dropped no less than 75% from fiscal year 1992 to fiscal year 2000. I would expect the current Congress to once again slash the OLMS budget, with the administration's blessing.

Union membership peaked in the 1950s, when more than one-third of American workers belonged to a union. Today, just 7.6% of American private-sector workers belong to a union. A Rasmussen Research survey conducted in March found that 81% of nonunion members do not want to belong to a union.

The response by union leaders and their Democratic allies to declining union membership is the Employee Free Choice Act. To increase unionization, it would deprive workers of private balloting in organizing elections, and it would substitute a signature-card process that would expose workers to coercion. The bill would also deny workers the right to ratify, or not ratify, labor contracts drafted by government arbitrators when negotiations in newly unionized workplaces exceed the bill's rigid timetable.

The Obama administration likes to say that it is "pro-worker." But something is amiss when its labor priorities are forcing unionization and labor contracts on American workplaces, and denying union members information on how their dues money is spent.

Ms. Chao was secretary of labor from 2001 to 2009 and is now a fellow at the Heritage Foundation.