Management Mag Shows How Employers Fear Employee Free Choice Act

by James Parks, Jan 15, 2008

With the 2008 elections looming, employers are desperately trying to stop what could be a political tsunami that will finally restore the freedom of workers to join a union. If voters choose a Democratic president and keep a Democratic majority in Congress, observers expect the Employee Free Choice Act to become law. And employers are in a panic.

In the January edition of HR Magazine, which caters to management types, Stephen Cabot, chairman of the anti-union Cabot Institute for Labor Relations, admits in an article that some employers cross the line when they resist unions. Cabot is quoted saying:

Currently, many employers engage in initiatives to counter union campaigns they wouldn’t dare do under [the Employee Free Choice Act]. Now, there’s a minor fine; under EFCA, every unfair labor practice will be potentially a $20,000 fine. Now, even if management is not overtly instigating it, the feeling is ‘if one of my supervisors is talking to people, it’s not so bad.’ With EFCA, it will be very costly.

Robert J. Grossman, author of the article, writes that the 2006 elections set off a huge political wave, and observers believe a Democratic president and Congress will “open the floodgates for union organizing” by passing the Employee Free Choice Act. (Click here to read the article.)

Why such a panic? Because unlike current labor laws, the Employee Free Choice Act has some real teeth. At the same time, unions have gotten smarter and more strategic in their organizing.

Consider this praise from HR for unions assisting workers seeking to join unions. These days, union organizers “are smarter, better prepared and more numerous,” the article says, and the campaigns are more sophisticated. Grossman singles out the “strategists in the AFL-CIO’s Center for Strategic Research and Change to Win’s Strategic Organizing Center [who] use ‘competitor analysis’ and other tools to target workforces.”

The article quotes Michael Lotito, a partner in the union-busting firm of Jackson Lewis LLP, complaining about corporate campaigns:

These corporate campaigns are consuming me. They are all-encompassing; the multiple levels of attack that take place require constant attention and anticipation. The union shows up at 70 percent of your facilities located in 25 states, same time, same day, with handouts that attack the company.

Simultaneously, it files unfair labor practices in some of the states, asks the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to investigate a claim that you’re not living up to your affirmative action requirements, and sends a critical letter to the investment community.

But Tom Juravich, director of the Labor Relations and Research Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, sets the record straight when he says:

Employers cry ‘foul,’ but [organizers just use] the same competitor intelligence methods that employers use.

AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff hits the nail on the head when he tells Grossman:

Corporate America is running amok. There is more than enough bad stuff they do to bring to light—how they treat their workers, their communities, their business partners.