Rebuilding the Labor Movement: Is card check overrated?
This isn’t a fully thought out post so much as a request for feedback. I know a lot of contributors and readers around here are involved in or close to the labor movement. And the big legislative issue facing labor in the early days of the Obama administration is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This bill is often referred to as the “card check” legislation, because one of its provisions would stipulate that a union is automatically recognized in a workplace if over 50% of the workers sign authorization cards. This would remove the need for a certification election campaign during which employers could systematically intimidate or fire workers (as often happens now).
But EFCA actually includes a bunch of stuff besides card check. And now along comes T.A. Frank in the Washington Monthly, who uses an excellent profile of a union organizing drive in Lancaster, CA to set up his argument that the focus on card-check is misplaced:
As a rhetorical matter, opponents of EFCA have seized upon card check with relish. “I think [EFCA] is a threat to one of the fundamentals of democracy,” John McCain recently declared. Countless Republicans—and, curiously, even George McGovern—have voiced similar attacks. Of course, as the story of the Lancaster distribution center shows, workplace votes on unionization certainly don’t resemble a healthy election as most Americans would understand the term, with both sides able to plead their case. But this has become a powerful line of argument.
The question, then, is how much of a fight the card check provision merits. And the answer is probably a little, but not a lot. What most undermines the secret-ballot process is that employers can violate the law in numerous ways without consequences. Under EFCA, however, every illegal action has the potential to be costly, so firings, spying, threats, or other forms of intimidation would be less likely. Also, there is an alternative way to preserve the secret ballot while guarding against company malfeasance: expedited elections. Under current law, months can go by between when NLRB announces the results of a card check vote and when a secret-ballot election is held. If, however, this campaign window were reduced to just a few days, employers would have less opportunity to intimidate union supporters into changing their minds. Workers I spoke to in Lancaster seemed content with this alternative. And some savvy people in the labor movement I spoke to feel the same way—provided that employers either refrain from captive-audience campaigning or else grant union members equal access to the workplace during a campaign.
A few months ago, I heard the excellent left-wing labor analyst Kate Bronfenbrenner argue more or less the same thing as Frank. She contended that without stronger action against employer intimidation, card check was unlikely to be any kind of magical remedy for declining union density.
So what say you, labor folks? Is it a mistake to focus our energy on card check? If progressives in congress could get a deal to give up card check in return for passing a version of EFCA with strong provisions for punishing employer misconduct, would it be worth it?
I have a friend who is an organizer and he is not too confident that EFCA will make much of a difference. The Democrats really must throw organized labor this bone, though. Otherwise, I hope the unions put all of their muscle into primary challenges next cycle (they won’t, of course).
I also agree that the other provisions in EFCA are more important than the card check aspect of the legislation, but card check would definitely make organizing somewhat easier, so I do think that it should be fought over, vigorously if necessary. If we can get it, hooray, but if we can get everything else in EFCA besides card check that would be a victory as well. A highly limited victory, but welcome. And yes, primary challenges would be more effective on the political front than anything else, but that makes too much sense.Adrian, you live in Chicago, right? Are the unions going to back Tom Geoghegan in that race for Emanuel’s former seat, as they should, or are they going to support someone else?
I believe that the arguments against focusing on majority sign-up are a bit naive, but not without merit. Several people I have spoken to the labor movement believe that elections are an important moral statement. They are an affirmation you may lose with majority-sign up with authorization cards. However, the majority of workers signing cards allows for another democratic tool for employees to form a union. While the other aspects of the Employee Free Choice Act such as harsher penalties are critical, I believe people are underestimating the importance of majority-sign up as an option and tool.
Image you are an employer who becomes aware of a union organizing drive. You know you would lose if the union has enough time and resources to talk to your employees and get them to sign the authorization cards. Then the threat of majority sign-up would lead you to push for an election. This would give the union a chance to request for “free and fair” elections where the employer has to stay out of the drive and prevents massive intimidation. Without the possibility of majority-sign up, employers can still cut their losses with fines and firings. As I remind people in the pro-Employee Free Choice Act material I drafted for YDS, most bosses are not right-wing anti-union ideologues. They address union drives with a cost-benefit analysis. It will cost more to fit the union, they would rather cave under favorable conditions than a protracted fight that hurts them economically both in the long and short term.
The passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would add millions of new union members in a matter of years. It is important for us to push the fact that majority-sign up is an alternative democratic method, secret ballots will be alive and well, and stiffer penalties will help level the playing field. We want to give workers a real choice whether they want a union or not. This legislation will be a step towards just that.
It’s important that our readers know that once liberal stalwart Sen. George McGovern has turned conservative as of late. I did see him a year or two ago defending social security on Fox News, but he has been praised by the right such as this article in The American Conservative.
Thanks, everyone, for the thoughts.I think I agree that card check is important enough that we should be very reluctant to give up on it. But I’m still half-persuaded by the argument that, of the various legislative options for improving labor’s strategic position, card check may be harder to win just on the level of PR. And if that’s the case, then it’s sort of a sucker bet for labor to make its stand on that one provision, because you can see why employers would want to fight on this issue (where they can demagogue about “protecting the secret ballot”) rather than on, say, stronger action against employer intimidation and mandatory arbitration if they employer isn’t negotiating in good faith. (And note also that without that mandatory arbitration clause, card check ain’t worth much anyway. Because as I’m discovering in my own union at the moment, the hardest thing isn’t getting certified–it’s getting a contract.)
One of the best points in the article I quoted is that you could achieve almost the same goals as card check with better enforcement plus legislation that mandated much shorter election periods (i.e. a few days rather than months), and again, it would be harder for business to campaign against that.
Aside on Geoghegan: I’m not really sure what the state of play is, but I’m guessing Tom’s not getting a ton of labor backing given that a) the unions are tied into the machine politcs there and b) Geoghegan’s done some work on behalf of union reformers that has not exactly endeared him to the leadership of some of those unions.
Final aside on McGovern: has he really “turned conservative” or is he just bad on labor issues? There’s a bit of a history there, after all, since the labor movement was not exactly kind to George back when he was running for President in ’72.
I don’t think the labor movement not backing him thirty years ago is enough to stop him supporting card check if he ultimately believed unions were good. He’s gotten conservative a few economic issues. I would suggest reading the link I posted. The article explains it better.
I’m sure most of us have probably seen this by now, but just in case, here’s some clips from a recent anti-EFCA conference call of business executives hosted by Bank of America: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/bank-of-america-hosted-an_n_161248.html<br>They are certainly gearing up for a huge fight over this bill. Perhaps if it’s necessary, a compromise can be struck over another issue near and dear to the hearts of our corporate leaders in return for passage of EFCA as it is. But I suppose it might not be worth it depending on what kinds of concessions they would look for.
David, as far as I can tell, the only other evidence for this supposed right turn is one rather confused WSJ editorial. That article you linked is mostly praising McGovern for being more pro-civil liberties and anti-war than Obama (the American Conservative represents an anti-imperialist strain of rightism.) And there ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Peter, Nice piece. I just caught up with it now. Three comments:
1-Almost nobody in labor thinks of EFCA as the Second Coming (or the first, if you’re Jewish.) It is the next serious fight, though, and a necessary fight to win. Absent a movement that uses EFCA to change the nature of the working class in the US from largely unorganized to sizeably organized, passing the legislation will be for naught. And if EFCA bottom line only helps unions interested in picking up dues money from workers whose employers sign sweetheart deals with unions (something the SEIU has sadly become adept at doing) to guarantee a house-trained labor force, then it’s a hugely wasted opportunity. Should it be passed? Absolutely! Should it be labor’s #1 legislative priority. That and trade pact renegotiation, yes! Does it signal the end of time? Hardly.
2-But it IS superior to the choice you and others offer: real enforcement of existing laws and a better NLRB. Those are all good things, but the value-added of EFCA is that it facilitates working people organizing themselves. It forces union organizers to make a case and support what workers want in a first contract. It puts at least some power into workers hands; an interventionist liberal government doesn’t do that. And where are we when that liberal government is voted out of office? I wouldn’t despair over EFCA because the right can launch a slick disinformation campaign. Rely on them to do that regardless of what reforms labor advocates. The key is labor and its allies raising their own information campaign. My fear isn’t that the right will prevail on EFCA so much as Obama will choose to drop it, just as Carter dropped labor reform during his tenure.
3-On McGovern. George was a progressive in his youth. Not a Democratic Socialist but in the orbit of the Farmer-Labor movements and (for good or ill) Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party. As a young academic, he authored what I think is still the best study of the Ludlow Massacre, in which Greek and other immigrant miners were slaughtered in southern Colorado by gun thugs in the pay of John D. Rockefeller Jr. And George didn’t move right because “the unions” abandoned him. Plenty of them did not, including the UAW and AFSCME. It was the AFL-CIO and George Meany who screwed McGovern (along with the Teamsters, of course.) So though it’s tragic that George is now shilling for the Right to Work (for less) Foundation–and he is, go to their Web site– I think it’s overstating to blame Labor circa 1972 as a whole for his present apostasy.