Got Union?

In his speech to the Illinois state AFL-CIO convention on October 7, 1965, three years before joining the cause of the sanitation workers in Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said:

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.

It may be unbelievable today but it is the law of this land, the United States of America, to encourage workers to form unions.

(It is also a universal human right recognized by the United Nations in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1948). Article 23.(4) states: “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”)

The Preamble to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935:

It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.

In 1935, when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the NLRA or the Wagner Act), it recognized the direct relationship between the inequality of bargaining power of workers and corporations and the recurrent business depressions. That is, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners, the economy fell into depression. The law therefore recognized as policy of the United States the encouragement of collective bargaining.  [Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn, Assault on Collective Bargaining Illegal, Says International Labor Rights Group, March 13 2011, http://archive.truthout.org/assault-collective-bargaining-illegal-says-i.... The story is about the Wisconsin Legislature stripping collective bargaining rights from public workers.]

Similarly, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 declares: § 7101. Findings and purpose (a) The Congress finds that--

(1) experience in both private and public employment indicates that the statutory protection of the right of employees to organize, bargain collectively, and participate through labor organizations of their own choosing in decisions which affect them--

(A) safeguards the public interest,

(B) contributes to the effective conduct of public business, and

(C) facilitates and encourages the amicable settlements of disputes between employees and their employers involving conditions of employment; and

(2) the public interest demands the highest standards of employee performance and the continued development and implementation of modern and progressive work practices to facilitate and improve employee performance and the efficient accomplishment of the operations of the Government.

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act says, "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection ..."

The words “self-organization” and “labor organization” and “representatives” do not refer exclusively to the usual definition of a “union” as a formal organization with a constitution and by-laws and elected leaders. Section 7 applies to any two employees who do a “concerted activity”, such as going to the boss together to complain. They have formed an informal union.

The law does not require them to have majority support in order to engage in collective bargaining. Coworkers joined together can bargain collectively for themselves. They need majority support to bargain for everyone else. They also need majority support in order to win the best possible deal.

Section 9 of the NLRA says that if a union proves majority support through an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), then the union is recognized as the sole and exclusive bargaining representative for all employees, whether or not they are members or support the union. Also, a union can achieve exclusive bargaining representative status if it proves majority support through “card check” – counting signature cards – and the employer agrees to recognize the union as the exclusive bargaining representative.

You and your coworkers, whether as individuals in concert or as members of a formal organization, have access to the NLRB to settle any charges that your employer is denying you your Section 7 rights. There is parallel Massachusetts law for state, county, and municipal employees – actually better law, because it grants a union exclusive bargaining representative status through card check.

It’s a lot easier, more straightforward, for the NLRB if you organize into a formal organization, a union or association. It’s may be easier for you too if it is a national or international union.

But your organizing path may not be straight and forward. An informal group of workers asserting their right to engage in other concerted activities may have to take a winding road.

In either case, Western Mass. Jobs with Justice is here to help workers assert their right to organize.

Written with help from Wisconsin, labor rights, public employees: Revised FAQs, 2/24/11, by Robert J.S. Ross.