Say I want to join a union and have the opportunity to vote for it with a secret ballot:
Employer/manager: Don’t you dare vote for the union. It will destroy the company/bring about the apocolypse/make you lose your job/make your wife leave you/make your kids hate you. And besides that you will go to HELL!
Me: Okay. (votes for union in secret, employer/manager none the wiser)
But here is what you are really afraid of:
Union rep: You must vote for the union. It will bring peace on Earth and make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Besides that your wife will come back to you and your kids will stop hating you. You also get a guaranteed ticket to Heaven!
Me: Okay. (votes against union in secret, union rep and fellow employees none the wiser)
To put this in political terms, there’s a difference between having a meeting at which the Republican (or Democratic) party can discuss issues, and having a Republican (or a Democrat) standing there in the voting booth with you, noting down who you vote for.
Yes. What purpose does it serve to give the union exclusive knowledge of who would have preferred to remain without a union?
I would do that by keeping the secret ballot as the primary means of deciding whether to unionise, not a vote (by means of the signed cards) which is hidden from the employer but controlled by the pro-union side. The purpose is that people can be harassed or intimidated into openly signing a card far more easily than they can be intimidated into voting a particular way in a secret ballot.
Am I talking to myself here? Am I on ignore? Go back and read some of my posts about why this sort of thing most likely won’t happen under Free Choice. Anecdotally, it may still happen occasionally, but institutionally it won’t make sense for unions to do this, and they’re not doing it at an institutional level now.
…and I see you completely ignored the difficult parts of my post.
People have the right to freely associate. It’s in the Constitution. What you are proposing would bar the union and it’s supporters from participating in that right.
You also fail to address the words of Richard Wagner, the author of the original NLRA.
It seems, therefore, that you oppose any right for workers to freely associate and negotiate with their employer collectively.
I will say it again: organizing is not interference. It is participating in a right guaranteed to all Americans.
Sorry for interjecting some humor into this most serious discussion.
Okay, as I’ve said before I am NOT anti-union and I’m sure we can find some common ground. Here are a couple of points I think we can agree on:
Most employers would strongly prefer NOT to be unionized.
Many employers, when faced with the prospect of unionization, would go to great lengths to discourage it among their employees. Some might even resort to threats and intimidation.
Simple question, would an employee be more likely or less likely to vote for a union under these threats and intimidation with a secret ballot verses a public one?
A side note: While I have nothing at stake personally (I am now self-employed), I find the topic an interesting one for debate. Further, I find that the civil discourse by all in this thread to be terrific and the debate is enjoyable, unfortunately I have to go in for some complicated eye surgery tomorrow and will not be able to continue my participation for a couple of weeks. I’m not trolling for sympathy, just didn’t want you to think I had abandoned ship. Best regards, Flex.
It’s unclear to me what you don’t understand. Several posters in this thread have posted experiences where they felt harassed and intimidated by union organizers. Do you simply not believe their experiences?
It’s very, very easy for me to see why workers who opposed joining a union could feel intimidated. There are so many things coworkers have power over other coworkers in. They could sit on tasks to make a coworker look bad, they can blame problems on them, they can fail to inform them of information, not show them the ropes, not cover shifts, etc. etc. Then there is the issue of dealing with over aggressive organizers. The easiest way for a worker to avoid any of these issues is to sign the union card, and then vote against the union.
I don’t see a compelling, or really any, reason to give that up.
I didn’t ignore it because it was difficult. I ignored it because it was a non sequitur. The First Amendment protects your freedom to form a union, it does not protect your right to have that union certified as the exclusive representative of employees who want nothing to do with your union.
I’m really glad you brought that up since I never even considered the possibility. Yes, if I was threatened or intimidated by management I would most definitely vote for the Union.
I don’t believe this bears out with human nature. One can just as easily say that management has nothing to gain long term by intimidating its workers and it behooves them to keep their workers happy. In reality unions and management are staffed by people; most are upstanding but a few are unscrupulous. Intimidation by union supporters will happen. The passage of this bill will only make intimidation more likely.
And you have doubted or denied that other anecdotes were true, so why are you complaining if the people whom you have publicly doubted without cause choose to return the favor? EVERYONE, stop it with the whiny little “I don’t believe you” posts.
There. You want to deny unions the right and the ability to contact people. AFAIK, that would violate the 1st amendment right to freely associate. You can’t forbid people from ever approaching other human beings. Also, the union has to know who supports them, since they are the ones who file the petition with the NLRB.
That’s why I brought it up.
You are free to not associate, but you aren’t free to never be approached by another human being. How can a union know if someone supports them or not, if they cannot talk to a worker? Will you now argue that in all cases, a worker has to take the initiative and first approach the union? Again, read the words of Richard Wagner. I already posted them twice, this time you can just scroll up (or go back a page or whatever).
Unions exist because there is a need for them. The same need that causes us to have jails, a police force, a military, a government: we know we cannot trust each other. History, and human behaviour, shows us this.
With the deck already stacked for employers, laws like the NLRA and the (proposed) EFCA were crafted to try and give workers a chance to be treated with as human beings, instead of “resources”.
You don’t seem to feel that that is a good thing, or even necessary. I do.
It does not violate their First Amendment rights to deny them access to the information about who voted for or against their certification as exclusive representative. They are still free to ask people whether people support them or not. The difference is that the Employee Free Choice Act would effectively make their answer to that question binding, which opens the door to intimidation and harassment.
No, they don’t. Even if you support certification of unions as exclusive representatives (which I don’t), they only need evidence that they have 50%+1 support, they don’t need to know the names of everyone who voted for and against them.
No one gets that information anyway. Not now and not later if the EFCA passes into law. Once a vote is taken, no one knows who voted for what. What makes you think otherwise?
No it wouldn’t make their answer to a simple question binding. Where did you read that? :dubious: Not until they sign a card stating their support would it count for anything. Just like signing any document makes it a valid legal document. Since you don’t seem to know much about the process, you perhaps don’t know that even after a card is signed, anyone can come forth and state that they have changed their mind, they no longer wish to be represented. A simple letter from a worker is all it takes, and employers can present them to the NLRB. That would come out during the NLRB hearings, and the panel hearing the case would most likely then toss that card. Call the NLRB and ask them; it happens occasionally.
LOL again
Dude, the union is the group that collects the cards with the signatures. How would they not know who signed them? Should the union organizers have to close their eyes when talking to people, accepting signed cards, etc? :rolleyes:
The difference is that those other entities are the government (and either directly or indirectly accountable to a secret ballot), and a union is not. Why should I trust a union more than the company I work for? They’re both just groups of people, some good and some bad. My boss is a great person, and so is her boss, and his boss. I don’t need an outside organization to fight for me, because the one I’m already in works fine. You guys seem to believe that it’s in a union’s best interests to treat potential members well, but it’s not in a company’s best interests to treat its employees well. There’s really not much difference. Unions and companies both have reputations that they pay attention to (if they’re smart).
Regarding the 58% figure–58% support doesn’t necessarily translate to 58% membership, because unionization is an winner-take-all system, like the Electoral College. As the 2000 presidential election showed, an overall majority doesn’t always result in majority representation.
Suppose we have twenty companies, each with fifty employees. If I remember Olentzero’s figures right, two companies should be union, with 90% support, so that’s 90 employees. Now suppose that four neighboring companies aren’t unionized (for whatever reason), but have 80% support. That’s another 160, for 250. That leaves only 330 in the other fourteen companies, an average of 24. If they’re distributed equally, unionization will fail in all fourteen, resulting in 30% union membership.
Of course, if individual employees were given the choice of whether to join or not, all 58% could have the “benefits” of membership. But the unions don’t want that, in spite of their professed altruism.
More likely with a secret ballot or less likely?