Over the past few months a few friends have asked me what I thought about the Employee Free Choice Act, now wending its way through the Congress. These friends are people I’ve known for many years, most of them involved, like me, in some aspect of the labor movement. Most of the time I try to keep my answer to a few generalities about the process rather than any prediction of outcome or analysis of the bill—this last being the most difficult thing because I am by nature and employment an analyst of labor matters. Silence is harder than comment.
Another difficulty is that labor people, though a particularly discursive lot, are not in the way of suffering apostasy—and they draw the line quite close to prevailing doctrine. Such doctrines as exist tend to emanate from the leadership of unions and from larger organizations like the AFL-CIO.
The current stance on the Employee Free Choice Act, held by practically all the unions in the country, is that the Act would make organizing a much quicker and fairer process. The bill’s authors claim is that workers who have tried to organize have failed because of the unconscionable delaying tactics and anti-union animus of employers.
I don’t think that EFCA in its present state will ever see a President’s signature. And I think that if it did pass, that it would not have nearly the effect claimed by its supporters. Simply put, the difficulty in organizing private firms won’t be greatly eased by any provision in the current legislation.
What I do think is that EFCA is a rather poor piece of legislation thrown at a problem whose essence is really the inability of private-sector unions to win over workers—even and perhaps especially workers in the sort of industries wherein unions used to prevail.
What labor wants to achieve through EFCA is a reversal of fate through a transformation of process. Labor spokesmen will tell you that what they are after is simply the effect that followed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. EFCA would require the substitution of card check approval for the present scheme and schedule of elections, thus eliminating the long spell of time during which employers have communicated their own version of events, which messages often enough include promises to cease operations or move the facility. Unionists consider these to be unfair threats; companies consider them the exercise of free speech. What both sides agree upon is that the tactic has been remarkably effective, especially when organized by outside firms specializing in these affairs.
And the reason that the company message has been so effective is that it has the ring, or perhaps the stink, of truth: private firms do close and certainly do move overseas because of union organizing. And they also take other measures, such as cutting hours to eliminate full-time employees and their more costly benefits.
In any organizing campaign the worker hears three messages: that of the union, that of the company, and the voice of common sense, that song of experience and hard-won knowledge. An organizer’s traditional burden has always been overcoming the employer’s claims. In the past, the voice of common sense told workers that a union shop was preferable to the alternative, making the argument two-against-one in favor of the union from the start. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Though every poll shows that workers believe unions to be a good thing, when push comes to secret ballot, many vote the other way. Unionists insult the intelligence of their prospective members by suggesting that the company has frightened the bargaining unit with false claims. The truth is, those who vote against a union are generally pretty well informed about the state and nature of employment conditions and outcomes in America.
Nobody in the HR department has to tell them that they are fortunate to have jobs, especially jobs with decent benefits, and nobody has to warn them that all of this can disappear in the wink of an eye. When management puts out bad vibes about moving or closing shop it is only adding volume to the warning voice of common sense.
The present generation of unionists seems shocked at this sort of thing, as though they didn’t realize that a deal their forefathers cut with Capital a long time ago ensured a constant struggle with an enterprising foe. The advantage in the long run goes to the private firms, which can shift shape, combine, and when necessary, vanish. They also own the plant and the job. Workers possess only their own labor, an article whose current value is measured in world markets against all comers. That much any worker knows, and he balances that knowledge against the argument of the union organizer.
Most of the 20th Century success of trade unionism came about because enough elements of a scheme found acceptable to the Congress and the representatives of labor at the time of the Great Depression survived attack to remain in operation for a couple of decades after passage of the law. That, as they say, was yesterday. Today’s worker needs a job more than he wishes a union, and he feels it is unlikely he can have both. The unionists have thrown EFCA at the problem, a bill that does nothing to silence the harsh song of common sense, and which has no remedy for its causes.
Michael McGrorty
