Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overturned an important precedent that had protected the right of individual employees to seek union decertification elections in their workplaces. Under the NLRB’s Dana Corporation decision, employees could petition for a secret ballot election within 45 days if a union won recognition using the card check system. That’s the controversial procedure under which employees are asked to sign cards supporting unionization. The problem with card check is pressure: It’s hard to say no when a burly unionist wants your signature. The Dana precedent gave workers a second chance that was both secret and safe. In the Lamons Gasket Company case, decided on Aug. 26, the NLRB said it would no longer recognize the Dana requirement because it represented “a major change in Board law” that was “unwarranted.” The decision was rushed through because the term of board chairman Wilma Liebman, who was appointed by President Obama, was about to expire. It should also be noted that the board acted despite the fact that board member Craig Becker, another Obama appointee, participated in the deliberations and vote despite having been an advocate for the labor side in the Dana decision.
Why the Dana precedent represented an important protection of individual worker rights was ably described last week in an Examiner oped authored by Barbara Ivey. She explained that “after working at Kaiser Permanente for 21 years, I was abruptly informed that Service Employees International Union organizers were launching a ‘card check’ drive at my workplace. Following a 13-day campaign, company officials announced that SEIU organizers had collected enough union cards to become the sole bargaining agent at my office.”
Ivey and a number of her colleagues went through the Dana process of collecting signatures to hold a secret ballot election, which the NLRB scheduled for Oct. 4. But once the Lamons Gasket decision was announced in August, the Oct. 4 election was cancelled, without explanation. “Choosing whether to unionize is a serious decision, and card check unionization drives are often fraught with misinformation, harassment and even intimidation. Before the NLRB’s Lamons Gasket decision, workers at least had an opportunity to demand a secret ballot vote following a card check campaign. Now we don’t even have access to that modest restriction on aggressive union organizing,” Ivey wrote in the Examiner.
In contrast to the NLRB’s haste to decide Lamons Gasket before the end of Liebman’s term, the board is now dragging its feet on another case bearing on the right of individual workers to decide for or against union representation. In September 2009, workers at a new Boeing plant in South Carolina voted 199-68 to decertify the International Association of Machinists (IAM). Then in March 2010, the IAM filed its unfair labor practice complaint against Boeing, seeking to force the company to shut down the South Carolina plant.
According to Boeing employee Dennis Murray, who filed a counter-claim against IAM on June 15, 2011, “the IAM unions are attempting to sabotage the jobs and work of the employees in North Charleston, SC, for the sole or primary reason that these employees rejected IAM representation and chose to work for Boeing without the interference of a labor organization.” An NLRB spokesman did not return our call regarding the status of the Murray complaint.
