Only 6 percent of all workers in the private sector who are represented by unions voted for it, according to a new study by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
In many cases, the workers took jobs at businesses that were already unionized, sometimes decades prior to their employment. Because federal labor law favors maintaining the status quo once a union is recognized, most of the workers never had a chance to weigh in — and are unlikely to ever get one.
“Most current U.S. union members are represented by unions they had no say in electing. The [National Labor Relations Act] election process, while nominally democratic, does not measure the preferences of current American workers,” said James Sherk, Heritage’s labor policy analyst.
The think tank analyzed the number of workers who voted for union representation in workplace organizing elections between 1973 and 2015, using data published by the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency. The study found that while private-sector unions represent 8 million workers, only 478,000, or about 6 percent, of those workers ever checked “yes” to having a labor representative in an election monitored by the National Labor Relations Board.
The 6 percent figure doesn’t necessarily indicate how many of those workers are pro-union or anti-union. It is possible that many of those who never voted would have supported a union given the chance. The study includes cases in which companies voluntarily recognized unions without requesting a federally monitored vote, which could indicate that the employer assumed workers would have wanted one. The study also includes cases in which workers did have a chance to vote in workplace organizing elections but for whatever reason did not. Those workers may have accidentally missed the vote or may not have been aware of it or simply had no interest in voting.
In many cases, unions benefit substantially from low-turnout elections since they are required to win a majority of votes cast, not a majority of all workers. “If unions needed majority support in the workplace … they would have organized 60,000 fewer workers between 2012 and 2015,” Sherk said.
Notably, unions, once established, almost never voluntarily hold recertification votes. The National Labor Relations Act, main federal law covering private sector unions, does not require one, even if the workforce has completely turned over. Instead, the law presumes that the union still has majority support.
As a consequence, most unions exist indefinitely once they gain recognition and only cease if the employers go out of business. “For example, between 1936 and 1941, the [United Auto Workers] organized the Detroit automakers — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The automakers’ current employees were all hired well after 1941, and they never voted for UAW representation themselves. But the ‘presumption of majority support’ means that the UAW never had to win their support in a new election,” Sherk noted.
If a recertifaction vote does happen, it is typically the result of a petition to the labor board by disgruntled workers. The unions invariably fight such efforts. Just 0.1 percent of all private-sector, union-represented workers voted in 2015 on whether to keep their unions. In about 60 percent of those cases, the union lost recognition.
The Heritage study does not estimate how many members of public-sector unions, which represent an estimated seven million workers, voted to be represented. Public-sector unions, most of whom represent state and local government workers, are generally not required to submit data to the federal government.
Republican lawmakers have called for reforming the union election process. The Employee Rights Act would, among other provisions, require a union win majority support from all workers to gain recognition, not just a majority of votes cast. It also would require unions to submit to a recertification vote once more than half of the workers who voted initially are no longer employed.
The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, did not respond to a request for comment.
