Fighting a Union Campaign: What Employers Can and Can’t Do
If your organization is targeted by a union-organizing effort, take note. Both the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Taft-Hartley Act prohibit employers from discriminating against employees for participating in union activities. Ultimately, whether you’re targeted or not may depend more on your geographic location and industry than on actual working conditions. That’s because many unions target specific areas or industries to gain momentum and credibility with workers. Then they try to negotiate a “model” compensation plan that they can use at other companies to attract new members. Labor law gives your employees the right to join a union. Assuming you prefer to operate as a nonunion company, what are your rights? You have the right to express your views in an effort to persuade your employees not to join a union, and you also have the right to run your business. Use and protect these rights by exercising caution and controlling your own behavior: Don’t act emotionally or with a feeling of betrayal. Make sure you have a thorough knowledge of the labor law rules and have expert help. Your own conventional wisdom won’t suffice, nor will your own determination of what is fair, no matter how objective you think you are. Present your side and get the hearing you want by following the game plan the law allows. It may appear too restrictive, but you clearly have weapons available. Despite labor law pitfalls and restrictions and the frustrations they may cause, you can emerge intact from a union’s organizing campaign. You may hold meetings with your employees on company time and property to answer questions and discuss the company’s position and unionization. Just make sure the meetings aren’t held in a supervisor’s office. Talk with employees at their own workstations or in a group meeting. You can also mail literature to the employees’ homes, stating the company’s position, but be careful what you say. A lawfully waged campaign may defeat an organizing drive. Violation of the rules of conduct, however, can result in invalidation of a company-won election or certification of a union that lost an election. It’s important, therefore, that you seek legal advice promptly. Observation: You don’t have to bend over backward to cooperate with unions either. In a recent court of appeals decision, a company had refused to let union organizers post notices of their upcoming meetings on a company bulletin board. The NLRB ruled this discriminatory because the company had allowed other worker notices to be posted. However, the appeals court said the only notices previously allowed on the bulletin board were by employees selling cars and household goods, so it was not discriminatory to say “no” to union backers. To take advantage of your right not to be cooperative with union organizers, don’t allow your bulletin boards to become a general forum for workers. As the court noted, the company never posted notices for any type of meeting, so it wasn’t discriminatory in preventing workers from posting union meeting notices. Caution: If you try to pick and choose the meetings you think are worth publicizing and those that are not, you will have a hard time showing a judge that the rejection you gave to the union supporters was not discriminatory. Also, you must not seem to be designing a policy for bulletin boards or other communications channels that appears to target unions. Put a policy in place—and strictly adhere to it—when there’s not a threat of unionization in the air, and it will stand you in good stead should the organizers later target your company.
Why Employees Should Not Want a Union
After the initial campaign all new employees who are required to join the union are obligated to pay an initiation fee, which can range from $50 to $200 in some unions.
- Through strike assessments, employees may have to financially support striking workers at other companies.
- The union is an equalizer. Under the union concept every employee is the same (except for seniority), thereby equating the poorest worker to the best.
- The only real weapon the union has is to strike. When that occurs, employees lose wages, which are usually never recovered, and employers are compelled to take extraordinary measures to continue operating.
- Employees who participate in an “economic” strike can be permanently replaced by their employer. The law allows the employer to continue to operate his business during a strike by using supervisors, nonstriking employees, volunteers and new employees.
- Local union members often have little say concerning their own employment. Usually, orders come from the national or local office of the union.
- A union’s primary interest is not in an employee as an individual but rather as a source of income and power. Unions can, and sometimes do, bring with them strikes, bad feelings and even violence on occasion.
- Employees can be adversely affected by internal politics and external union problems with other companies and may even be required to picket at other companies.