The case, Unite Here Local 355 v. Mulhall, involves the constitutionality of “card check neutrality agreements” between unions and companies they’re trying to organize. That’s the technical-sounding term for agreements that pave the way for unionization by restricting companies from running union-busting campaigns, and by committing companies to recognize a union and start negotiating if a majority of workers sign union cards, rather than holding out for a government-supervised election. In exchange, unions can agree not to publicly shame and slam the company – which means calling off the kind of public pressure campaign often necessary to compel companies to sign away their union-busting rights.None of this would matter as much if the New Deal National Labor Relations Act, which commits the federal government to encourage collective bargaining (seriously, that’s what it says), actually ensured that it was up to a company’s workers, not its management, whether to have a union contract. But the government-supervised National Labor Relations Board unionization process is, depending on your level of cynicism, either “broken” or “fixed” against workers. It’s rife with opportunities for bosses to delay, gerrymander and intimidate workers – including holding mandatory on-the-clock anti-union lectures full of ominous “predictions” – without breaking the law. And research suggests it’s also marked by rampant illegality — including alleged illegal firings in a third of election campaigns – that’s perhaps predictable given that the worst-case scenario for scofflaw CEOs is usually reinstating an employee months later with back pay. Even if pro-union workers win an election, the law alone doesn’t make corporations offer real contract concessions, and a year after the vote workers are about as likely as not to still be without a union contract.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 20:16:45 +0000
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