It seems there’s more than one way to meddle with organizing elections at the expense of workers.
While most of Capitol Hill’s attention has been on the misleadingly named Employee Free Choice Act – with its ability to kill jobs, set aside the secret ballot, and crush small businesses – there’s another attempt to rig organizing elections underway in a little-known federal agency. The Wall Street Journal uncovers the details here:
“The latest looming political favor features the National Mediation Board, the federal agency established in 1934 under the Railway Labor Act to oversee labor relations in the air and rail industries. A department of the AFL-CIO last month sent a letter demanding that the board tear up longstanding rules requiring that a majority of all airline or rail workers vote in favor of union representation to win union certification.
“The AFL-CIO instead wants a ‘minority rule,’ requiring only a majority of the employees who actually vote. Under current rules, if an airline has 10,000 nonunion flight attendants, 5,001 must vote yes to unionize. Under the union proposal if only 2,000 of 10,000 vote, and 1,001 vote yes, all 10,000 become subject to unionization. …
“The union says it merely wants an election governed by the same rules that apply to nontransport industries under the National Labor Relations Act. But the Railway Labor Act was written because the government viewed transportation as economically vital, and one of the law's purposes is to avoid damaging strikes. Every Mediation Board since 1934 has upheld the majority rule, on grounds that ‘certification based upon majority participation promotes harmonious labor relations. A union without majority support cannot be as effective in negotiations as a union selected by a process which assures that a majority of employees desire representation.’
“The Railway Labor Act also offers no direct way for workers to decertify a union once it is in place, which is why the law provides the initial safeguard of a majority vote. The Supreme Court has twice upheld the majority rule, and the Mediation Board has four times rejected requests to change it, as recently as last year. The majority rule has been used in more than 1,850 elections, and unions have won more than 65% of the time. At least one Board (under the Carter Presidency, note) bluntly said that only Congress could change the voting rules.”
Editorial, “Flying the Union Skies,” The Wall Street Journal, 10.07.09
What’s going on at the National Mediation Board is a clone of what’s going on in Congress with EFCA: a time-honored and successful method of organizing is threatened by a new approach that disregards the rights of workers – and even common sense.
These shenanigans come to us courtesy of special interest union leaders, who want to increase their numbers and their political clout – at the expense of just about everybody else. It’s just one more reason why this and EFCA must fail.
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