Unions don’t deserve to live forever

What’s worse than a bitterly cold winter that never seems to end? Try a labor union that doesn’t want to leave.

The problem is caused, in part, by our antiquated labor law. Once a union has won an election, typically it continues collecting dues forever—even if the people who voted for the union are long gone. As a consequence, an analysis of data from the National Labor Relations Board and the Census Bureau shows that less than ten percent of currently unionized employees ever voted for their unions.

{mosads}Currently, the only way to get the union out of a workplace is a decertification election, a process that requires employees opposed to the union to put a target on their backs. Mari Gusman, who works at a nursing home in Wisconsin and tried to decertify her union, learned this lesson the hard way: The union showed up at the homes of her supporters to intimidate them, and even distributed letters attacking Gusman personally.

Naturally, labor union bosses oppose efforts like the Employee Rights Act (ERA) that would skip the intimidating decertification process, and require an automatic vote to recertify the union after half of voters in the initial election had transitioned out of their jobs. Union members and the general public have different views: National polling consistently indicates 80 percent of union household members support adding an automatic and guaranteed revote provision to our employment laws.

But unions have an unexpected ally in preserving the status quo: certain big business interests. It’s an odd partnership, based on some misguided concerns by employers about disrupting business as usual—however dysfunctional the “usual” might be. Fortunately, there is good evidence that both unionized employers and performing labor unions have little to fear from a new paradigm of employee rights.

First of all, decertification efforts already do happen. Although they are difficult to undertake, the NLRB reports that an average of roughly 600 decertification efforts have made it to the petition filing stage each year for the past decade, with roughly half making it to the voting stage. On average, about 190 local  unions are decertified—abolished—each year, following an affirmative vote of over half of the employees voting  in the bargaining unit. Businesses that had in some cases longstanding relationships with the unions that represented their employees suddenly had no union—and little seems to have happened, other than a newfound workplace freedom for those   who wanted it. (And if the new status doesn’t work out, it’s easy to bring the union back).

It’s a similar story in Wisconsin, which adopted recertification requirements for public-sector teacher unions in 2011. State law requires annual votes to keep the union around, and at the end of last year, about half of the local unions affiliated with the Wisconsin Education Association Council held votes.

WEAC won over 95 percent of the retention votes that were held  (half of the locals , presumably aware that they’d lost member  support, didn’t attempt to recertify) suggesting that performing unions have little to worry about from the recertification process. Meanwhile, employees no longer have to battle to remove an ineffective one.  

There’s more to the ERA than just recertifying a union. It would guarantee employee secret ballots on unionization. No longer could an employer and a union agree to union representation without an employee secret ballot vote (yes—there are employers who will voluntarily agree to unionizing their employees for a variety of reasons), expand the employee’s right to refuse their dues being used for political activity, and hold unions accountable for threats and violence while they pursue union business.  Each of these important reforms has wide public and union household support. Importantly, none would affect the right of employees to collectively bargain if the union had majority support. And none demand that employers who have what they believe is a productive relationship with a union from encouraging employees to support the status quo.

Businesses and unions have a choice: They can support reforms backed by large majorities of the public and union employees.  Or they can continue to obstruct reforms to a last century law that is no longer relevant to most workplaces. They should choose wisely.

Berman, a lawyer and former lobbyists, is the head of Berman and Company which operates several industry-funded non-profit organizations including the Center for Union Facts.