The National Labor Relations Board’s “speedy election” rule has drastically increased the pace for when union organizing elections are held, but it has not meant a higher win rate for unions.
Data released to mark the one-year anniversary of the rule’s adoption show that the median number of days between when a petition for a union workplace election is filed and when an election is held had been reduced from 38 in the year prior to the rule to 24 in the year after. That included cases in which businesses voluntarily agreed to an election. In cases in which the board directed businesses to hold elections, the number fell from 64 days to 34.
That did not, as many unions and business groups expected, alter the unions’ win rate, which actually fell slightly from 66 percent to 65 percent over the period. That’s despite the number of requests for certification of a union remaining almost exactly the same, at 2,144 in the past year, up from 2,141 in the previous one.
The rule was adopted by in April 2015. The board said that the rules “were designed to remove unnecessary barriers to the fair and expeditious resolution of representation cases, simplify representation-case procedures, codify best practices, and make them more transparent and uniform across regions.”
The board also required that employers turn over all private contact information for their employees to a union, regardless of whether the workers themselves had authorized the disclosure.
Unions had long requested the change. They complained that time lags between when a workplace election was requested and when it was held gave management an unfair advantage by giving them time to mount campaigns to convince employees not to support a union.
Business groups countered that speeding up the elections was intended to benefit unions by forcing employees to vote before they had the opportunity to make an informed choice. Trade associations dubbed it the “ambush election” rule.
“No matter how much the unions attempt to get unfair advantages in elections though their NLRB enablers, they cannot convince many more workers to sign up for labor organizations that value force over the free market and politics over what is best for the individual worker,” said Vinnie Vernuccio, director of labor policy for the Michigan-based Mackinac Center, a conservative nonprofit.
A court challenge to the rule pushed by top business trade associations including the Chamber of Commerce was rejected by the a D.C. District Court last year, which found that the labor board had acted within its authority.
Republican lawmakers have shared the business group’s alarm over the rule, stating that it was intended for no other reason than to benefit unions. Lawmakers have proposed legislation, such as the Employee Rights Act, which would roll back the rule, among other changes.
