Election day

In representation elections an employer cannot poll the voters. Its an unfair labor practice. Every now and then the employer's attorney gets fooled and everyone is surprised at the loss the union puts on the employer. I've never had this type of embarrassment in a representation proceeding. Knock on wood.

Incrementalism

Mike Elk has a post at In These Times about rebuilding the labor movement. What he gets right is big initiatives by big labor don't work. Organizing workers is a long hard slog. One that requires localizing union solutions for uniquely local problems. This requires hard work, but yields success, albeit in small increments.

Details (and the devil in them)

The NLRB has issued a fact sheet and resources links to provide guidance regarding the dramatic changes in the NLRB's election process. This is a bigger change than anything the current NLRB has done since the 2008 elections. Before a union may represent a group of employees it must establish it is the chosen representative of an un-coerced majority of those employees. Where the issue is contested, the NLRB conducts a secret ballot election. Under the old rules an election is normally conducted between 45 and 60 days from the filing of a petition. The new rules are designed to streamline the process, eliminate an employer's ability to obtain a decision on voter eligibility before the election, and shorten the time between the filing of a petition and the conduction of the election. While this is not EFCA, it certainly advances some of the goals of the failed legislation, primarily very quick elections. Details after the jump

Support workers still seek unionization at Jefferson Parish schools

The Times-Picayune has a good piece on the Jefferson Parish Support workers bid for unionization. Hint: It ain't happening. Previous posts here.

Revitalization roadmap

A former union organizer (20 years) has penned a piece on revitalizing unions for The Nation. Key point, unions need to organize people, not necessarily in unions, but around ideas and causes that really matter to, well, people.

Union free ramp up

Bloomberg has a good piece on corporate ramp up in advance of expected legislation to provide an easier path for organizing workers. As noted before, card check is dead, but quickie elections are a likely result of early action in 2010. Its a political necessity for Democrats to energize their labor base.

"The penalties are so miniscule . . ."

From the AFL-CIO blog (with video) a GRIT TV segment on union busting. Hint: they blame the consultants for scaring workers away from unionization. Basically Labor continues to engage in the delusion that all workers would join unions "but for" their employer's opposition. But at the end of the video, the point well made is the penalties for serious violations are an insufficient deterrent to employer misconduct. Assuming this aspect of the NLRA is broken,  and there is a lot of agreement among labor relations professionals on both sides on this point, it does not follow that the election process is broken.  With EFCA, unions want employees to choose unionization without providing time for any presentation of the case for remaining union free. That's what is really at stake with both card check and quickie election proposals.

Bronfenbrenner opines

Kate Bronfenbrenner serves as director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. In that position she advocates for significant changes in the federal labor laws. She reports rampant violations of worker's rights occur during organizing drives.  According to her sources, who often are the very union organizers who experience failure in trying to get workers to select union representation, worker intimidatiion is the cause of labor's membership decline. This, of course is an overly narrow and self-serving explanation. Her new opinion piece in the Providence Journal is typical.

NUHW wins Santa Rosa election

In a tight vote, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital healthcare workers have apparently chosen the National Union of Health Workers (NUHW) as their representative for collective bargaining. The vote was NUHW 283, 263 for No Union, 13 for SEIU. There were 17 challenged ballots. The linked article provides significant detail about the contentious fight between SEIU and NUHW, as well as the roller coaster election tallying of ballots. We have previously blogged about this here and here. The SEIU is being accused of stonewalling the certification by not cooperating in the resolution of the 17 challenged ballots. If the challenges are not resolved there will be a runoff election without SEIU on the ballot, In a close election the outcome of a runoff is not guaranteed.