Industrial and Labor Relations Expert: The System Is Failing

In an opinion piece published by the Washington Post this morning, industrial and labor relations scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner writes about the obstacles facing workers today.

Over a five year period, Bronfenbrenner studied more than 1,000 union elections and the behavior employers exhibited during the process.

Here's what she found:

In 34% of the elections, companies fired employees for union activity.
In 57% of the elections, employers threatened to shut down their facilities
In 47% of the elections, employers threatened to cut wages and benefits
In 63% of elections, supervisors interrogated workers in one-on-one meetings, and in 54% of elections supervisors threatened individual workers in those meetings.

Bronfenbrenner writes that this wasn't always commonplace. In fact, she's seen a "steady decline of workers' rights in the past several decades," where "employers are more than twice as likely as they were in the 1990s to use 10 or more tactics...to thwart workers' organizing efforts." Many of these are "punitive and aggressive," and she has seen a marked shift away from "softer tactics such as social events, promises of improvement and employee involvement programs."

The system itself, she states, is failing "to defend workers' rights in a timely manner" and creates "delays that favor employers." That, in itself, is a large reason to support the Employee Free Choice's "first contract arbitration" section. Bronfenbrenner found that 52% of workers "who form a union are still without a contract a year after they win an election," and 37% "remain without a contract two years after the election." For employers, she notes, "labor law provides yet another means to indefinitely delay unionization."

Bronfenbrenner concludes that "if recent trends continue, there will no longer be a functioning legal mechanism to effectively protect the right of private-sector workers to organize and collectively bargain."

Read the full opinion piece here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/02/AR2009060202967.html