August 7, 2008
Bill Would Make it Easier for Unions to Organize Retail Workers
Retailers are anxious about the upcoming election for a number of reasons including the distinct possibility that a Democrat-controlled Congress and White House could lead to the passage of a bill that would make it considerably easier for labor unions to organize retail workers.
The bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800), sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D – CA) and co-sponsored by 233 members of Congress, was passed by a vote of 230 to 195 in the House of Representatives in March 2007. A Senate version (S. 1041) sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy and co-sponsored by 43 others, including Sen. Barack Obama, did not pass but is likely to be reintroduced in the next session of Congress.
The bill is intended to establish a system that sanctions a union to represent workers if a majority of employees sign authorization cards. Under the current system, employers can either recognize unions that have gotten a majority of workers to sign cards or they can demand a secret ballot election. Unions have long argued that a call for a secret ballot ultimately lends to unfair practices on the part of employers seeking to keep organized labor out. Companies winning such elections have said that workers given the choice to vote for or against union representation have simply chosen to stick with the status quo.
A law similar to the Employee Free Choice Act is in place in the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Quebec.
Louis Bolduc, a spokesperson for the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, told The (Montreal) Gazette that card-based certification doesn’t always mean a store will be organized but that it makes it easier.
Discussion Question: What are your thoughts on the Employee Free Choice Act? What would it mean for the retailing business? Would it have an impact on consumers?
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Union membership has been on the decline in America for years. There are a number of reasons for this decline. First, many laws and regulations have made the workplace safer and employees have not had to turn to unions to protect them. Second, jobs have changed from manufacturing to service content. Third, has been the stealing of union money to the extent that members don’t receive their pension or benefits.
Unions must either sign up more members or get out of the game. They cannot afford the overhead with declining membership.
Unions are strong backers of the Democratic Party. Members have even complained how much money has been given to Democratic candidates. They have invested in equipment just to help Democratic candidates and now they are looking for payback. The facts are clear. It cost one tenth the money to treat associates right than it does to live with union work rules and extortion techniques.
If Walmart can operate without unions, so can any retailer. It should be viewed that any time there is a union in retail, it represents a failure of management. Yes, it will be easier to sign up members, but it does not have to be. This law is most likely to target Walmart and then the rest of the retail world.
Amen, Frank! So unions think it is more fair to strong-arm people in private than to submit to a secret ballot? Gimme a break. I have rarely seen unions improve anything in the last several decades. In my working life, I’ve been in the Teamsters (throwing around boxes in a warehouse), Amalgamated Meatcutters & Butcher Workmen of America (supermarket cashier/stocker) and Newspaper Guild (BS artist) and I found all 3 to be oppressive rip-offs. Unions are dying off with cause. Further unionization at retail will result in higher expenses for business and poorer service to shoppers, with no real benefit to the union members.
I think there was a time when unions held too much power–just as there was a time when taxes were too high. But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, in my view, to the point where companies like Walmart think nothing of flouting the labor laws that are on the books.
I recognize that union management has been corrupt, and I don’t have an answer for that, but I think that at this moment unions need a way around the harassment and intimidation that has stymied recent efforts to organize our lowest-paid, most vulnerable workers.
I also think some knowledge workers could benefit by organizing. While my own work ethic has at times led me to scoff at the 40-hour work week, the plain facts are that anything much over 60 is physically unsustainable over time. How many times have we caught Corporate America in decisions so monstrously bone-headed they defy common sense, or massive errors in execution they could only have come from someone who was half asleep?
I’d be willing to bet that at least some of those corporate missteps came from people who were half asleep, putting in the 75th, or the 85th, hour of a week that should have ended while the decision-makers were still thinking clearly.
Ever since I started hearing the stories of the Walmart labor abuses: time-clock alterations, employees locked in at night and being forced to work off the clock and more, I’ve thought a lot about the stories of the early labor movement: The Pullman strike. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Do we really have to go all the way back there?
At the same time, I can understand retailers’ fears of the abuses of labor’s more immediate past: featherbedding and infiltration by organized crime, to name two. Yet I’ve gotta believe that today’s union organizers haven’t been blind to the last 20 years of quality and innovation in business. I know that labor and management are working together in new ways in the auto and aerospace sectors to modernize those industries–at least in a few companies.
So my hope is that with easier organizing and some common sense on both sides, we can start to rebuild an economy that understands that consumers should, ideally, have incomes–not just credit–to support the level of consumption that it takes to keep the engine running. And that in return, people at every level of an organization owe their customers–internal and external–the very best products and service they can deliver.
This would be bad for the investors and bad for the consumers. If lawmakers want to continue receiving large donations from retailers then they better start passing legislation that benefits retailers.
The only winners I see in this would be the unions, which would collect more union dues. If this results in higher labor costs, then retailers would have no choice but to eliminate workers. Often, unions try to portray some fantasy that somehow the lifestyles of workers will be improved. Perhaps for some, but most will find themselves on the picket line or the unemployment line wondering what the heck they voted for.
If employees were treated with respect, both personally and financially, in a positive work environment, there would be little need for unions. If employees had proper health care and pensions there would be little need for unions. Are unions the panacea for workers? No. Are unions perfect? No. But in the current management/labor environment are they needed? Yes.
I fear this law would tip the scales unfairly toward union organizations. I am not against unions in general but there needs to be a fair method of determining if a company will be represented by a bargaining unit.
I agree that unions are the by-product of poor management and in most cases and have little sympathy for these companies. But unions are not exempt from poor management either and in far too many cases have forgotten their original mission. Some unions are only concerned about the wages and benefits of their management and have lost sight of the average member.
All I really am concerned about is maintaining a fair means of determining if a company is represented by labor and this bill would not accomplish that, in my opinion.
Did someone just say that receiving contributions was contingent upon passing legislation? That is illegal on both sides. It is called bribery. And on unions stealing members money: they do not even compare with the boys at Enron who stole it from widows and orphans.
Curiously, the same conservatives who extol “trickle down,” “a rising tide lifts all boats” and other cliches don’t think the same applies to wages: don’t (the presumably) higher wages secured by unions ultimately raise the overall wage level? Is it just coincidence that the split of income between labor and profit has shifted from the former toward the latter over the last few decades as union membership has declined?
Of course, Management will tell us that this rule no longer applies and if wages dare to rise, the jobs will just have to be eliminated or offshored: fine, let’s hire the Board of Directors from Mumbai too!
This shouldn’t be one of those allies vs. enemies issues.
Government, most likely a third party, should outlaw unions but at the same time adopt and enforce minimum standards of product and labor safety.
Yet in reality, the solutions aren’t nearly this back and white and are instead many shades of gray.
As a former union activist and current management consultant, I can assure you that retailers should be very anxious about the Employee-Not-So-Free Choice Act, as it will be extremely injurious to all employers and their employees.
By making it easier to unionize merely through card check, many retailers will become subjected to unionization through a myriad of deceitful practices such as stealth organizing, using union moles (aka ‘plants’), getting young and often gullible workers to sign union authorization cards because ‘everyone else is’, organizers making false and misleading promises, and so on. All of the above practices happen today, only under current law gives workers the ability to hear from both sides, obtain knowledge, and make an informed choice in a secret-ballot election.
And if trickery and forced recognition weren’t bad enough, most employers don’t realize the other aspect of EFCA which is the pure job killer–binding arbitration after 120 days of unionization. As unions typically add between 15 and 30 percent in administrative costs only (i.e., not wages and benefits), this will cripple smaller mom and pop retailers.
The intimidation argument being put out by the unions is pure crap. Having been involved in a few hundred campaigns, the vast majority of campaigns involve education from management to employees about the law, the union’s rules and regulations, where the union spends its members’ money and the realities of negotiations and strikes. That’s it.
It’s having an educated workforce is what unions fear, which is why they’re pushing this dangerous legislation.
This legislation will kill American jobs. It is that simple.
The question still remains–which we asked on EmployerReport.com in 2007–will the legislators who support this bill answer to their constituents when more jobs are lost because of unionization?
Union organizing skills are so minimal these days that any employer who gets organized by a union must be astoundingly incompetent or 1-in-a-million unlucky. Not one American Walmart or Target has been unionized. Why be afraid of such incompetence?
Can anyone explain how the Employee Free Choice Act accomplishes anything but free choice when your vote is done in public? This nation was founded on the principal of free and open elections where people have a right to voice their position in private. This act is nothing more than unions trying to intimidate workers into accepting union membership so that they can stem the loss of their membership. If unions truly provided value to workers, they would be growing. Since the usefulness of unions has declined over the past 50 years, so has their membership. Unions should have to compete for their membership as any company does: in the free market of ideas and choices.
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Union membership has been on the decline in America for years. There are a number of reasons for this decline. First, many laws and regulations have made the workplace safer and employees have not had to turn to unions to protect them. Second, jobs have changed from manufacturing to service content. Third, has been the stealing of union money to the extent that members don’t receive their pension or benefits.
Unions must either sign up more members or get out of the game. They cannot afford the overhead with declining membership.
Unions are strong backers of the Democratic Party. Members have even complained how much money has been given to Democratic candidates. They have invested in equipment just to help Democratic candidates and now they are looking for payback. The facts are clear. It cost one tenth the money to treat associates right than it does to live with union work rules and extortion techniques.
If Walmart can operate without unions, so can any retailer. It should be viewed that any time there is a union in retail, it represents a failure of management. Yes, it will be easier to sign up members, but it does not have to be. This law is most likely to target Walmart and then the rest of the retail world.
Amen, Frank! So unions think it is more fair to strong-arm people in private than to submit to a secret ballot? Gimme a break. I have rarely seen unions improve anything in the last several decades. In my working life, I’ve been in the Teamsters (throwing around boxes in a warehouse), Amalgamated Meatcutters & Butcher Workmen of America (supermarket cashier/stocker) and Newspaper Guild (BS artist) and I found all 3 to be oppressive rip-offs. Unions are dying off with cause. Further unionization at retail will result in higher expenses for business and poorer service to shoppers, with no real benefit to the union members.
I think there was a time when unions held too much power–just as there was a time when taxes were too high. But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, in my view, to the point where companies like Walmart think nothing of flouting the labor laws that are on the books.
I recognize that union management has been corrupt, and I don’t have an answer for that, but I think that at this moment unions need a way around the harassment and intimidation that has stymied recent efforts to organize our lowest-paid, most vulnerable workers.
I also think some knowledge workers could benefit by organizing. While my own work ethic has at times led me to scoff at the 40-hour work week, the plain facts are that anything much over 60 is physically unsustainable over time. How many times have we caught Corporate America in decisions so monstrously bone-headed they defy common sense, or massive errors in execution they could only have come from someone who was half asleep?
I’d be willing to bet that at least some of those corporate missteps came from people who were half asleep, putting in the 75th, or the 85th, hour of a week that should have ended while the decision-makers were still thinking clearly.
Ever since I started hearing the stories of the Walmart labor abuses: time-clock alterations, employees locked in at night and being forced to work off the clock and more, I’ve thought a lot about the stories of the early labor movement: The Pullman strike. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Do we really have to go all the way back there?
At the same time, I can understand retailers’ fears of the abuses of labor’s more immediate past: featherbedding and infiltration by organized crime, to name two. Yet I’ve gotta believe that today’s union organizers haven’t been blind to the last 20 years of quality and innovation in business. I know that labor and management are working together in new ways in the auto and aerospace sectors to modernize those industries–at least in a few companies.
So my hope is that with easier organizing and some common sense on both sides, we can start to rebuild an economy that understands that consumers should, ideally, have incomes–not just credit–to support the level of consumption that it takes to keep the engine running. And that in return, people at every level of an organization owe their customers–internal and external–the very best products and service they can deliver.
This would be bad for the investors and bad for the consumers. If lawmakers want to continue receiving large donations from retailers then they better start passing legislation that benefits retailers.
The only winners I see in this would be the unions, which would collect more union dues. If this results in higher labor costs, then retailers would have no choice but to eliminate workers. Often, unions try to portray some fantasy that somehow the lifestyles of workers will be improved. Perhaps for some, but most will find themselves on the picket line or the unemployment line wondering what the heck they voted for.
If employees were treated with respect, both personally and financially, in a positive work environment, there would be little need for unions. If employees had proper health care and pensions there would be little need for unions. Are unions the panacea for workers? No. Are unions perfect? No. But in the current management/labor environment are they needed? Yes.
I fear this law would tip the scales unfairly toward union organizations. I am not against unions in general but there needs to be a fair method of determining if a company will be represented by a bargaining unit.
I agree that unions are the by-product of poor management and in most cases and have little sympathy for these companies. But unions are not exempt from poor management either and in far too many cases have forgotten their original mission. Some unions are only concerned about the wages and benefits of their management and have lost sight of the average member.
All I really am concerned about is maintaining a fair means of determining if a company is represented by labor and this bill would not accomplish that, in my opinion.
Did someone just say that receiving contributions was contingent upon passing legislation? That is illegal on both sides. It is called bribery. And on unions stealing members money: they do not even compare with the boys at Enron who stole it from widows and orphans.
Curiously, the same conservatives who extol “trickle down,” “a rising tide lifts all boats” and other cliches don’t think the same applies to wages: don’t (the presumably) higher wages secured by unions ultimately raise the overall wage level? Is it just coincidence that the split of income between labor and profit has shifted from the former toward the latter over the last few decades as union membership has declined?
Of course, Management will tell us that this rule no longer applies and if wages dare to rise, the jobs will just have to be eliminated or offshored: fine, let’s hire the Board of Directors from Mumbai too!
This shouldn’t be one of those allies vs. enemies issues.
Government, most likely a third party, should outlaw unions but at the same time adopt and enforce minimum standards of product and labor safety.
Yet in reality, the solutions aren’t nearly this back and white and are instead many shades of gray.
As a former union activist and current management consultant, I can assure you that retailers should be very anxious about the Employee-Not-So-Free Choice Act, as it will be extremely injurious to all employers and their employees.
By making it easier to unionize merely through card check, many retailers will become subjected to unionization through a myriad of deceitful practices such as stealth organizing, using union moles (aka ‘plants’), getting young and often gullible workers to sign union authorization cards because ‘everyone else is’, organizers making false and misleading promises, and so on. All of the above practices happen today, only under current law gives workers the ability to hear from both sides, obtain knowledge, and make an informed choice in a secret-ballot election.
And if trickery and forced recognition weren’t bad enough, most employers don’t realize the other aspect of EFCA which is the pure job killer–binding arbitration after 120 days of unionization. As unions typically add between 15 and 30 percent in administrative costs only (i.e., not wages and benefits), this will cripple smaller mom and pop retailers.
The intimidation argument being put out by the unions is pure crap. Having been involved in a few hundred campaigns, the vast majority of campaigns involve education from management to employees about the law, the union’s rules and regulations, where the union spends its members’ money and the realities of negotiations and strikes. That’s it.
It’s having an educated workforce is what unions fear, which is why they’re pushing this dangerous legislation.
This legislation will kill American jobs. It is that simple.
The question still remains–which we asked on EmployerReport.com in 2007–will the legislators who support this bill answer to their constituents when more jobs are lost because of unionization?
Union organizing skills are so minimal these days that any employer who gets organized by a union must be astoundingly incompetent or 1-in-a-million unlucky. Not one American Walmart or Target has been unionized. Why be afraid of such incompetence?
Can anyone explain how the Employee Free Choice Act accomplishes anything but free choice when your vote is done in public? This nation was founded on the principal of free and open elections where people have a right to voice their position in private. This act is nothing more than unions trying to intimidate workers into accepting union membership so that they can stem the loss of their membership. If unions truly provided value to workers, they would be growing. Since the usefulness of unions has declined over the past 50 years, so has their membership. Unions should have to compete for their membership as any company does: in the free market of ideas and choices.