China’s Next Growth Strategy … The Employee Free Choice Act

On Monday, NAED forwarded members a message from the NAW regarding proposed legislation that could significantly impact manufacturers and distributors.

Our “legislators” are getting ready to discuss the misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act”.

According to the NAED email,

“Under the proposed card check system, a union conducting an organizing drive would be immediately and automatically recognized as the certified collective bargaining agent if it is able to persuade 50% plus one of the employees in a workplace to sign authorization cards. Workers who decline to sign an authorization card would be compelled to accept the union as their bargaining agent.

Also under this legislation, once the union is recognized, if the employer and union fail to reach an agreement within 120 days, the union can demand that the negotiations be referred to “interest” arbitration in which a third-party arbitrator decides the terms of the agreement, which would be binding for two years.

Now, we’re not against unions as one of us has been in a union and the other has family that works with unions, but …

• Eliminating the secret ballot process just seems wrong. We vote via secret ballot in political elections. What are unions afraid of?
• Signing a card vs a secret ballot enables there to be an element of intimidation from those viewing the signing … don’t sign and you may be singled out. Could we have influence by the minority?
• A union, however, can be beneficial when management is indifferent to its most important asset, its people, and poorly treats them. There are some companies that have happily coexisted with unions, and then there are other relationships where a “we vs they” environment is developed which can be detrimental to a company (witness the automotive industry).

What does this mean?

• Unions need strategies to grow their membership. What better way than to get Congress to help (especially since the union donates more to Democrats than Republicans and we know who has the majority Congress).
• While some may look at this from a selfish viewpoint (thinking unions will negotiate higher wages), in reality, unions need to make money (hence employees pay a membership fee, a deduction in every paycheck).
• We have talked to manufacturers who say that if card check passes, this may force them to move their operations out of the U.S. This then becomes a growth opportunity for China, Mexico and other non-union countries.
• There are a number of distributors who have union warehouses and drivers. Work rules can hinder management and can be disruptive to operations and the goal of servicing the company. There is one distributor in Boston who suffered a prolonged strike a year or so ago.

NEMA is also doing its part to communicate to its members. Presumably IMARK and A-D recognize the risk and cost to their members and are reinforcing the message to their members and political contacts.

Combating the unions lobbying efforts is critical not only for distributor owners, but for everyone within a distributorship as well as teaming with manufacturers and their employees. It is important that this message is communicated throughout your company as research shows that employees look to management for insight on issues that affect the business. To see research on the value of communicating legislative issues to employees, click here.

Write your senator and congressman (both bodies need to be contacted) to express your opinion. Click here for members of the House and here for the Senate. And if you need ideas on how to market yourself internally, give us a call.

Do we want a unionized United States?