Much has been made of the fact that employers may intimidate a worker by interfering with their livelihood - cannot a union from time to time engage in the same activity?
Why exactly is that relevant to coercion in the process of forming a union?
Like they don’t say that already. 
You’re making baseless assumptions about what kind of regs would be insituted by an entirely hypothetical union, then saying you’d be opposed to unionization because of an imaginary, hypothetical rule that you just made up.
Anybody can intimidate anybody. Companies have the power to do more of it.
I have no idea what this is supposed to prove, but it looks like the union did a good job of policing itself – something those corporate fat cats never do.
Yeah, I said fat cats.
Ballet class is not unionization. My refusal to sign up doesn’t prevent you from taking the class. My refusal to sign up doesn’t affect your job security. My refusal to sign up doesn’t affect you or anyone else in the workplace whatsoever. With unionization, when I don’t sign, I’m essentially saying “I don’t want YOU (or anyone else here) to have the union support that you think is important for your job security and financial stability.” It’s a much more personal denial because my choice affects you directly.
It doesn’t require a majority, just the understanding that my choice denies the other guy something they think is important, and a lot of people are going to have a hard time telling a coworker they don’t want him to get the union support he wants. It’s an inherently difficult thing to tell someone, and the check card process puts it front and center.
The difference between these types of influences is that you can actually do something about employers who want to subvert the voting process. You can make rules that reduce/eliminate the “benefits” to stacking the workforce with anti-union people. You can fine companies who pay bribes, or threaten union supporters. You can actually try to make the secret vote an honest poll of worker opinion.
You can’t change the card check process to fix where I believe the influence lies, because it’s an inherent part of interpersonal relationships, and not due to malfeasance.
Let’s change it to a petition to allow gay cruising at the construction site then. If you don’t sign his petition, he can’t cruise at work. That’s going to upset him. Is everybody else being pressured and intimidated?
If you have the numbers on your side, you can’t be intimidated.
But what if we conclude that the law is incapable of remedying employer malfeasance during the election? At that point we have to weigh the ongoing employer malfeasance against the inherent influence of interpersonal relationships. I much prefer the latter, and I see little reason not to.
Not true - the case was brought before the NLRB, which found against the union, forced it to make restitution to O’Malley, and post the notice. That isn’t self-policing, it is regulation by the government.
I trust you’re in favor of that, right?
Not quite sure if I take your point here, Moto. By presenting an example of a union being adjudicated to be in the wrong, you prove that a union was thus adjudged. OK, so what? Are you speaking against the notion that all union activity is sanctified and pure, and beyond human fallibility? Do you really think that point needs to be made?
I think I do, yes.
There’s lots of talk here about various rights various entities have and the ways that they can conflict. It is true that the employer and the union may be at odds, and that the employer and employee may be at odds at other times. Less often noted are those instances where an employee is wronged directly by a union. However rare this might be, it is miserable when it happens to that employee. Mr. O’Malley may have really needed that overtime - he was denied it because he wasn’t a union member, though he paid money to the union for collective bargaining. That is wrong - and illegal.
We should be cautious when tinkering around with these laws that employee rights are respected - and these do include the right not to belong to a union. This right was affirmed in the Beck decision and is a pretty unavoidable aspect of First Amendment principles of the right of association.
All right then! All you guys who are saying that unions are utterly pure and infallible, and populated exclusively by persons of perfect character, are hereby rebuked. Moto has proven otherwise, and we are all appropriately grateful.
But how is a card-check less “drawn-out” than a secret ballot? In both cases you’re polling the workers.
How is it any more “sticking their necks out” to run a card check than a secret ballot? Are you implying that the union should be able to secretly poll the workers without any response from management?
Regardless of whether this was meant in jest or not, I believe that this is the underlying rationale for those against the secret ballot.
This is factually incorrect. In cases of intimidation and peer pressure, the numbers are weighted by the how vocal the people in question are.
Suppose thirty two percent of the people in the union are strongly in favor of the union, eight percent are vocally opposed, and the remaining sixty percent are silently dubious about the union and would vote against it on a secret ballot. Each of these people hears four times as many voices in favor of the union as there are against it, and is aware that he’ll have (at least!) thirty-two percent of his co-workers actively angry at him and possibly harassing him if he refuses to sign, with only eight percent backing him up. A fact he is actively reminded of when one of those vocal proponents is standing in front of him with the petition, giving him the hard sell.
So, a case where over two-thirds would vote against can seem like it’s four to one in favor on the peer pressure front.
To Deeg and others who are unclear on exactly how the EFCA is worded, and what changes will be made to existing laws, and what the current law re: unionization and elections are, please see this thread on the EFCA from a few months ago. Olent zero and I patiently explain the issues and the reasoning behind the need for the EFCA.
Since I have already spent a good bit of time explaining things in the other thread, those of you who would like to be educated on the subject can seek information there.
For those of you who have already made up your minds, like Flying Dutchman in the other thread, and will not be swayed no matter the evidence… have a nice day.
A quick question: since when is being a pussy who is afraid to stand up for what he thinks is right something that Americans find endearing and deserving of mollycoddling? What part of our culture and history encompasses this?
I find it amusingly disconcerting that the same people who argue against the so-called Nanny State will invoke it when it suits their anti-union purposes.
Agreed, these pro-union guys get intimidated and coerced by an employer who won’t even know how they voted!
Your reply is senseless.
Union organizers and supporters are standing up for what they think is right. They are striving against the status quo because they think it is necessary and right to do so.
You are the one making arguments that you want to protect from imaginary hypothetical intimidation, not me. The intimidation I spoke of (in the other thread) is real and documented.
I think it happened about the time when we noticed that ‘mollycoddling’ means ‘not tromping all over them and forcing things on them against their will’.
I find it unamusingly disconcerting that your position state here is logically eqivalent to saying that everyone who does not volunteer for the army deserves to be enslaved or killed by invading enemies.
This isn’t a theoretical debate. There is actually evidence to be evaluated. I don’t understand why you guys refuse to respond to or provide evidence. Instead you prefer to engage in these thought experiments about what we’d expect from both systems.
In actuality, card check results in less employer intimidation (Cite [PDF warning]) First petitioning for the election and then actually holding it just empirically takes longer and the process is public and open to management interference.
Yes. It seems to be the only way to prevents coercive tactics on the part of employers. Management gets to make all kinds of decisions without worker input. Why shouldn’t workers get to make their own decision about unionization without management input?