FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
CONTACT:
Josh Goldstein (American Rights at Work), 202-822-2127 x118
Karen Conner or Christian Dorsey
(Economic Policy Institute), 202-775-8810
New
Five-Year Study Shows Employers’ Anti-Union Behavior Intensifies
Rise in Firings,
Intimidation Show Need for Employee Free Choice Act
(Washington, DC)
— A new study by renowned labor expert and Cornell University professor
Kate Bronfenbrenner reveals that private sector employer opposition
to workers’ efforts to form unions has intensified and become more
punitive than in the past. Employers are more than twice as likely to
use 10 or more tactics – including threats of and actual firings –
in their campaigns to thwart workers’ organizing efforts. Today’s
anti-union activities include a greater focus than in the past on more
coercive and punitive tactics designed to intensely monitor and punish
union activity.
In No Holds Barred: The
Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing, published
by the American Rights at Work Education Fund and the Economic Policy
Institute, Bronfenbrenner provides a comprehensive, independent analysis
of employer behavior in union representation elections supervised by
the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The report also compares
employer behavior data in the study’s time period (1999-2003) to previous
studies conducted by Bronfenbrenner’s research teams over the last
20 years.
For the vast majority of workers
who want unions today but do not have them, the right to organize and
bargain collectively—free from coercion, intimidation, and retaliation—is
at best a promise indefinitely deferred. According to Bronfenbrenner,
in NLRB election campaigns, it is standard practice for workers to be
subjected by corporations to threats, interrogation, harassment, surveillance,
and retaliation for union activity. From the 1999-2003 data:
63% interrogate workers in one-on-one meetings with their supervisors about support for the union
54% threaten workers in such meetings
57% threaten to close the worksite
47% threaten to cut wages and benefits
34% fire workers
Even when workers succeed at forming a union, 52 percent are still without a contract a year after they win the election, and 37 percent remain without a contract two years after the election.
At a briefing today to unveil
the results, Angel Warner, a worker with Rite Aid in California trying
to form a union and get a contract with the International Longshore
and Warehouse Union said: “We wanted to form a union so we would be
treated with dignity and could speak up without fear of losing our jobs.
Now we finally got through the harassment to form a union and we still
don't have a contract. It shouldn't be like this. If my coworkers and
I want a union, we should have one."
Bronfenbrenner’s study documents
the increased use by employers of more punitive tactics such as plant
closing threats and actual plant closings, discharges, harassment, disciplinary
actions, surveillance, and alteration of benefits and working conditions.
At the same time, employers are less likely to offer “carrots,”
such as unscheduled raises, positive personnel changes, bribes, special
favors, social events, promises of improvement, and employee involvement
programs.
Private sector campaigns differ
markedly from public sector ones, where 37 percent of workers belong
to unions. Survey data from the public sector describe an atmosphere
in which workers may organize relatively free from the kind of coercion,
intimidation, and retaliation that so taints the election process in
the private sector. Most of the states in the public sector sample have
laws allowing workers to choose a union through the majority sign-up
process.
According to the report, the
failure of the current system to defend workers’ rights in a timely
manner multiplies the obstacles workers face when seeking union representation,
adding further delays that favor employers over workers. Bronfenbrenner
finds that employers appeal a high percentage of the cases and in the
most egregious cases the employer can count on a final decision being
delayed by three to five years.
Of the few cases in the representative
sample studied where a penalty was imposed, the heaviest penalty an
employer had to pay was backpay, minus the worker’s interim wages.
No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing is available at:
###