A faster way to collective bargaining: majority registration

Matt Bruenig as an employment lawyer recently he pointed to it“American labor laws and the bureaucracy they require make mass unionization impossible unless the rules for union certification and contract negotiation are simplified and streamlined.”

The evidence is compelling: Consider the union struggles at Starbucks, Amazon, and Mercedes-Benz. Private sector employers can all too easily use the NLRB’s bureaucratic process to thwart employee initiatives. And if that doesn’t work, they get another bite at the apple through the courts. Too often, justice delayed is justice denied.

Some organizers offered a convincing solution: Strike for recognition.

This strategy is great if the workers are sufficiently united and have the juice to strike. But in our experience, the vast majority of campaign organizers will not be able to reach anywhere near this level of militancy. Most workers are legally sanctioned, democratic process to build majority support and then obtain bargaining rights through the NLRB.

In the political maelstrom surrounding the recent Democratic National Convention, politicians often pledged to adopt the Protection of the Right to Organize (PRO) Actlabor reform law that was introduced after Biden was elected president. He died an ignominious death because the votes weren’t there in the Senate to defeat the Republican filibuster.

While the PRO Act has many good features, it does not address the basic need for “majority registration,” which was a critical part of efforts to pass the Act. Employee Free Choice Act During the Obama years, when the Democrats were in the majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Tragically, the moment of “hope and change” failed when Obama and the Democrats chose other priorities. In March 2007, with the support of 16 Republicans, it received 60 percent of the vote in the House of Representatives. But despite having a clear majority in the Senate, he didn’t have the 60 votes needed to speak.

With “majority registration”, workers wishing to join a union simply sign an authorization indicating their support. Once the majority have signed the cards, employers must recognize their union as the workers’ representative and begin negotiating a collective agreement. THE main advantage over the current process is that this “card check” certificate allows workers to move quickly from building majority support for their union to the bargaining table with their employer.

Unfortunately, the conservative elements of the AFL-CIO and its affiliates decided in 2020 that eliminating card checks was the best way to gain broader support for the PRO Act.

Nowadays, we regularly meet politicians who support the PRO law but do not understand that the key card control provision is missing. In fact, even many of our comrades in the labor movement do not know the difference.

The importance of the many NLRB decisions made during the Biden administration that contributed to the rise of organizing should not be underestimated. Of the board decision It allowed Starbucks Workers United (an affiliate of SEIU) to organize a single bargaining unit instead of multiple regional sites, winning a landmark victory in Buffalo, New York that inspired hundreds of baristas to organize.

Of the board ruler In another example, Amazon employees at the Staten Island fulfillment center had the right to agitate for union labor in the company lunchroom. More recently, the NLRB considered Amazon is the Delivery Service Partner’s entrepreneurial “joint employer” with full legal responsibility for working conditions and bargaining obligations.

Board of Directors 2023 CEMEX decision contains provisions that may compel an employer who doubts the union’s majority to file an expedited election request. Furthermore, if the employer blatantly violates the labor law, for example by threatening to withdraw benefits or dismiss union leaders, the board can order the conclusion of the first contract.

In addition to updating future labor law reform with majority membership, reform is needed that limits employers’ ability to overturn NLRB court decisions. Board decisions that have sometimes been years in the making must be protected from district court judges.

“The next version of the PRO Act must clearly limit the boundaries of the federal judiciary, as Trump-appointed judges at every level have gutted virtually every decision and rule of the Biden panel,” said Larry Cohen, a former CWA president from 2005 to 2015, told the AFL -He was the chairman of the organizing committee of CIO. “The self-enforcement in the current bill is equally critical, otherwise board decisions will be meaningless. The $1,000-an-hour, anti-worker law firms are eager to elect a Trump judge and then delay and destroy the wonderful work the NLRB has done over the past three years.”

There is no shortcut to a revived labor movement. And the road to the era of mass organization is certainly complex. However, reinstating majority registration and preventing judges from upholding board decisions would offer workers an easier way to access their collective bargaining rights. In the next round of labor law reform, let’s work to make it easier for millions of workers to start on the path to the power of collective bargaining.