03-22-06,10:14am

Elections sound democratic, right? Most of the time they are. But not when it comes to workers seeking to form unions in the United States.

Right now, if you and your co-workers want to join a union, you have to go through the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which includes an “election.” But NLRB “elections” are anything but democratic.

The NLRB process takes so long, is so tilted in favor of employers and has such weak remedies it actually encourages managers to harass, intimidate and even fire employees. Some of these actions may be illegal—but try getting your job back or stopping the harassment and you face months or years of costly litigation to battle your employer. The NLRB isn’t much help here.

In the early days of the NLRB, created in the 1930s, workers joined unions by signing cards indicating their desire to be represented by a union. Many unions are returning to that original process—and are achieving great success.

So much success that Big Business has launched a nationwide campaign to stop workers from exercising their freedom to form unions through this simple “card-check” or majority verification process. They’ve even introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to force workers to endure the lengthy and bureaucratic NLRB process because they know far fewer workers will join unions if they have to face years of NLRB plodding.

One of the claims by groups opposing workers’ freedom to form unions is that the NLRB process is “more fair” because union organizers “coerce” workers in the card-check process.

Not so, according to the vast majority of workers surveyed in a poll released today by the employee rights’ group American Rights at Work. Rutgers University and Wheeling Jesuit University professors Adrienne Eaton, Ph.D., and Jill Kriesky, Ph.D., respectively, conducted a national telephone survey of 430 randomly selected workers from worksites where employees sought to form unions using NLRB elections or card-check campaigns in 2002.

Among the survey’s findings:

Workers in NLRB elections were twice as likely (46 percent compared with 23 percent) as those in card-check campaigns to report that management coerced them to oppose the union. Fewer workers in card-check campaigns than in elections felt pressure from co-workers to support the union (17 percent compared with 22 percent). American Rights at Work Executive Director Mary Beth Maxwell sums it up succinctly:

Looking at the survey results, one can only conclude that card-check opponents are trying to solve the wrong problem. If protecting workers’ free choice is really the goal, then you’ve got to start by ending management coercion.”