Working Families Want a Voice
If you ever worked for a living, you know about the inequality of power between employers and employees.
Workers want to form unions so they can have a voice on the job to improve their lives, their families and their communities. All workers deserve to make a free and fair decision on whether to form a union.
What the Law Says Is Not What the Law Does
In 1935, Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act, giving workers the right to form unions and negotiate contracts with their employers. Under that law, workers have the right to express their views on unions, to talk with their co-workers about a union, to wear union buttons, to attend union meetings and to decide for themselves whether they want union representation, without interference by the employer.
Most workers have to use the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process to win a union. That process originally was designed to give workers the freedom to choose a voice on the job. But today, we’re seeing how the law puts nearly all of the power in the hands of the boss. The law isn’t working anymore.
Workers’ freedom of association in the United States is violated routinely, protections for workers forming unions are inadequate and enforcement of existing laws are much too weak, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the world’s most respected human rights organizations, in Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards, a September 2000 report based on an 18-month survey.
The Price We All Pay
Working families are paying a big price for employers’ interference in workers’ freedom to choose a union and for the government’s unwillingness to protect basic rights in the workplace.
- Wages are kept low, not only for union workers but for nonunion workers as well. Union workers earn 25 percent higher wages than nonunion workers, and new research shows that in areas where unions have a significant presence, wages are higher for all workers.
- As the number of workers covered by union-negotiated, secure pension plans has declined, working families face increasingly uncertain retirement income due to attacks on Social Security and because of the impact on their savings of the declining stock market and corruption on Wall Street.
- A whopping 45 million Americans lack health insurance.
- Productivity soars, but the purchasing power of workers’ wages is stuck 5 percent below where it was 30 years ago.
- Corporate profits are fat, and CEO pay is now more than 1,000 times the earnings of front-line workers.
- The nation’s 13,000 richest families, a mere 0.01 percent of the population, now have nearly as much income as the poorest 20 million.
What Happens When Workers Try to Form a Union
The law is not protecting the rights of workers who want a voice on the job. But it is protecting the freedom of employers and their hired consultants to mislead, harass, intimidate, threaten and coerce workers who are seeking to form a union. Corporate CEOs who would never dream of taking a job without a written, legally enforceable employment contract steadfastly refuse to negotiate contracts with employees. Workers who are trying to form a union routinely face employers who use many tactics to suppress their freedom to unionize and bargain collectively.
Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings
Private-sector employers often force workers to attend mandatory ‘captive audience’ meetings, during which they must sit through one-sided, anti-union presentations. Under the law, it is perfectly legal for employers to discipline or even fire workers for failing to attend these meetings, and workers who support the union can be forbidden to attend. No equal time—or any time—is allowed during working hours for workers seeking union representation to make their case. Almost all—92 percent—of employers in the private sector use captive audience meetings as a tactic to suppress workers’ freedom to form unions during union organizing drives, according to Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner.
One-on-One Pressure Sessions
Private-sector employers instruct company supervisors to hold one-on-one pressure sessions with workers who report to them. These meetings occur in 78 percent of organizing campaigns, usually at least once a week.
'Predictions’ of Shutting Down
Today’s labor law allows employers to “predict” (though not “threaten”) that a workplace will shut down if workers vote for the union, often scaring and intimidating workers out of exercising their freedom to choose a union. Fully 51 percent of companies threaten to close the plant partially or fully if the union wins the election. In industries that can move operations easily, the proportion of campaigns featuring employer threats to move or close is even higher, rising to more than 70 percent in manufacturing. Only 1 percent of companies actually do move or shut down after a successful union election, says Bronfenbrenner.
Endless Delays
Employers use long administrative and procedural delays to prevent workers from forming unions. And when workers succeed in forming a union—despite these and many other obstacles—employers often stonewall and bargain in bad faith, preventing workers from reaping the benefits of collective bargaining at least one-third of the time.
Illegal Firings
Private-sector employers illegally fire workers seeking to form unions and bargain collectively. In the past 40 years, the number of workers offered back pay as a result of employer misconduct grew by 1,600 percent—from 1,368 in 1958 to 23,682 in 1998. The penalties on employers who violate the law are so minor they don’t deter unscrupulous employers from breaking the law. Firings not only affect the worker who no longer has a job—it also sends a message to other workers that they take a huge risk when they speak out for justice, creating a chilling effect.
Hiring Union-Busting Consultants
There is an entire industry in the United States of consultants and lawyers whose sole purpose is to suppress the freedom of workers to form unions and bargain collectively. Employers hire these consultants to advise them on strategy and tactics and to coordinate their campaigns to snuff out their employees’ basic rights. While employers and their consultants have virtually unlimited access to employees on work time to dissuade them from forming a union, the union and the workers who support it have almost no access to the workplace at all.
No Penalties for Employer Violations of Workers’ Rights
Many employers who violate labor laws are never punished. When employers that do break the law are punished, the penalties are too weak to deter unscrupulous employers from breaking the law again and again. For example, when an employer breaks the law, they just have to post a blue and white sign in the break room saying they broke the law. When employers illegally fire pro-union workers, the most the workers can collect is back pay minus whatever they earned in the interim. A stunning 24,000 workers in 1998 received back pay as a result of unfair labor practice charges, including being illegally discriminated against for engaging in legally protected union activity—up from about 1,000 a year in the 1950s. Penalties for committing unfair labor practices are so weak some employers consider them a routine cost of doing business. “Many employers have come to view remedies like back pay for workers fired because of union activity as a routine cost of doing business, well worth it to get rid of organizing leaders and derail workers’ organizing efforts,” says HRW. “As a result, a culture of near-impunity has taken shape in much of U.S. labor law and practice.”
Millions of Workers Aren’t Even Allowed to Form Unions
Tens of millions of workers have no legal right to form unions at all. In September 2002, the General Accounting Office found 25 million private—sector and 7 million public—sector workers—or one-quarter of the entire civilian workforce—don’t have the right to form unions. Several groups of workers—such as supervisors, agricultural workers and independent contractors—do not have union rights under federal law. State and local government employees in 14 states and many federal employees are not covered by laws that allow collective bargaining.
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