Numerous changes to union workplace election rules by the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency, appear to be helping organized labor as the number of elections that unions are winning has risen sharply in the last few years.
The labor board presided over 1,628 private-sector workplace elections in 2015, of which the petitioning unions won 1,128 for a 69-percent success rate, according to a report by Bloomberg BNA. That’s the highest win rate for organized labor in a decade and the second highest in the last two decades. Overall, the elections netted unions 62,000 new members.
That’s good news for organized labor because it helps to arrest years of steady declines in membership. The Labor Department reported in 2009 that 7.6 percent of private-sector workers belonged to a union. That share fell to 6.6 percent in 2013, but has stabilized since then at 6.7 percent. Public-sector unions, which account for about half all union members, are not covered by labor board rules.
The results follow changes by the board in 2014 that sped up the scheduling of union elections from about two months after they are first authorized to about two weeks. Unions had long pushed for the change, arguing that business used the interim to pressure employees into voting against a union. Business groups and Republican critics have dubbed the change the “ambush election” rule, arguing it is meant to pressure workers into backing unions before they can hear about the potential downsides of joining one.
The board also has sharply limited the ability of businesses to raise objections prior to a vote, forcing most questions over such issues as which workers should be eligible to participate in the election to wait until after the votes are counted. It also has said that businesses must turn over all employee contact information, including personal phone numbers and email addresses, to unions even if the workers object to giving that information away.
Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce said at the time the board adopted the rule change that it was about “simplifying and streamlining the process” to ensure that the “representation process remains a model of fairness and efficiency for all.”
The labor board in 2014 also reversed a rule that said unions had to organize all employees in a single workplace. Under the revised rule, unions can now organize smaller “micro-union” groups, provided that all those workers have a common connection. For example, instead of having to organize an entire department store, a union could organize just the workers in the sporting goods section.
Republican critics have introduced legislation to roll back those changes and proposed other legislation to reform workplace election rules, such as the Employee Rights Act, which would ensure that all workers have federally monitored secret ballot votes, among other reforms.
