Big Labor bosses have a problem: Despite their vitriolic rhetoric and a small number of loud online activists, most workers want nothing to do with unions.
A Gallup poll released last Labor Day spotlighted the issue: A strong majority of nonunion workers in the U.S. (58 percent) say they are “not interested at all” in joining a union, whereas just 11 percent say they are “extremely interested.”
Since it takes a majority of workers in a given workplace to support a union before monopoly union representation can be imposed, union organizers face a basic math problem — one that explains why only 6 percent of private-sector workers are unionized today.
Yet rather than consider ways of making unionization more attractive to rank-and-file workers, politically-connected union bosses have a different plan: Rig the rules to force more workers into their ranks, willing or not.
President Biden, who campaigned on being “the most pro-union president in American history” and is counting on Big Labor’s multi-billion-dollar political machine again in 2024, is unleashing his administration to the benefit of his favorite special interest.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), stocked with Biden appointees and former union lawyers, has been busy doing just that. If workers won’t voluntarily vote unions in, Biden’s NLRB, whose rules cover most private sector workers, wants to take their vote away.
That’s why the NLRB, at the end of August, effectively mandated the “card check” unionization process by bureaucratic fiat. Never mind that numerous union-backed measures in Congress to require this abuse-prone unionization process have failed to pass into law.
Card-check drives occur when employers, usually in the face of union-applied political and economic pressure, waive workers’ right to a secret ballot election. During these drives, union officials are allowed to demand union authorization cards directly from workers using coercive tactics that would be unlawful during a secret ballot vote.
Union organizers can show up at workers’ homes over and over again demanding signatures, in some instances requiring workers to call the police to get organizers to leave. Workers report being misled about the true implications of signing the cards, and some have been told they would be fired if they didn’t sign just before the union successfully took over.
Some workers even face threats of violence. In one SEIU organizing drive, a worker reported being told that the union would “come and get her children” and “slash her tires” if she didn’t sign a union card.
By its very nature, card check-makes it impossible to keep one’s views on unionization private, a dangerous liability in the often heated environment of a union organizing drive.
The Biden NLRB’s moves to rig the rules to favor union bosses don’t stop there. Any day now, the Biden majority on the Board, which includes two former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyers, is expected to finalize rulemaking to undo the 2020 “Election Protection Rule” and further restrict workers’ right to hold votes to remove unions they no longer want representing them.
In overturning the 2020 rule, Biden’s NLRB is trying to block workers from holding “decertification” votes, which strip undesired unions of their power to impose their representation upon all workers in a bargaining unit. This is a priority for Big Labor because in recent years the NLRB has seen double-digit increases in the number of worker-backed decertification petitions.
The Biden NLRB rule would also eliminate workers’ right to challenge a card check by requesting a secret ballot vote, instead giving union officials a year to impose a contract after installing themselves via card check. During that year-long period, union bosses would have the opportunity to impose a union contract that itself could block a decertification vote for up to three additional years.
Another provision in the pending rule would mean that even when workers are allowed to file for a decertification vote, union officials can block the vote from taking place by filing unsubstantiated “blocking charges,” sometimes one after the other, against the employer. The result will be a delay of months or even years before ballots can even be cast against the union.
This is a cynical ploy to make unionization drives easier, while blocking the exits for workers dissatisfied with poor union representation.
While we honor workers this Labor Day, the Biden NLRB’s machinations are also a reminder that the position in favor of union bosses is frequently an anti-worker position.
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Foundation.