Left Turns

If at first you don’t succeed, change the rules and try again. That seems to be the motto adopted by Big Labor in its effort to unionize a Tennessee-based Volkswagen plant. After failing to win an election involving all of the plant’s hourly employees, the United Auto Workers prevailed last week in a vote that included only 164 skilled tradesmen, a fraction of the plant’s 1,400 workers. 
  
This ploy is the most recent example of how the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) micro-union scheme is helping Big Labor gerrymander America’s workplaces, limiting opportunities for workers to advance their careers and burying employers in union red tape. As Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline (R-MN) explained shortly after the NLRB blessed the proliferation of micro-unions:

 

Under the board’s new standard, it will be virtually impossible for employers to challenge the group of employees handpicked by the union. The new standard empowers union leaders to manipulate workplaces for their own gain, with dramatic consequences in the real world. Some employers will be constantly engaged in costly labor disputes and workers will compete against their coworkers for wages and benefits.
 

Last week’s Volkswagen vote adds yet another example of union bosses trying to fracture workplaces, a list which already includes:
 

• The second and fifth floor women’s shoe departments at a Bergdorf Goodman store,
   
• 44 massage therapists at a resort spa,
   
• 31 of 78 hourly employees of two rental car agencies at Denver International Airport, and
   
• The maintenance employees of an ice cream manufacturing plant.
   

That’s why Republicans are championing the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act. In addition to protecting workers’ right to make an informed decision in union elections, the legislation will prevent Big Labor from using tactics like this “carte blanche ‘create-your-own-union’ power.” Otherwise, as was the case last week in Tennessee, Big Labor will just continue to divide and conquer the nation’s workplaces. Regardless of what the workforce really wants. Regardless of the costs.

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