Big Labor propaganda against Right to Work laws and legislation often implies, and sometimes claims flat out, that federal labor law "forces" union officials to negotiate contract terms for employees who choose not to join a union.
For example, "The Big Lie," a mass-produced AFL-CIO booklet that officers of AFL-CIO-affiliated unions frequently distribute during anti-Right to Work lobbying campaigns, brazenly contends:
"Federal law requires a union to represent all employees where the union has a contract with the employer."
On its face, this claim is simply false.
As Roberts' Dictionary of Industrial Relations, a basic reference book for any student of U.S. labor law, shows clearly, nothing in federal law prevents union officials and employers from negotiating contracts in which "the employer recognizes the union for its members only."
Under the entry: "Bargaining Agent, for Members Only," Roberts' Dictionary even offers a sample members-only contract clause: "The employer recognizes the union as the collective bargaining agency for all of its employees who are members of the union on all matters affecting those employees who are members."
Former Pro-Big Labor NLRB
Chairman Admits: The Law 'Permits
"Members-Only" Bargaining'
In his 1993 book Agenda For Reform, Stanford law professor and former union lawyer William Gould, who went on to serve for four years as the Clinton-appointed chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, acknowledged that the law "permits 'members-only' bargaining for employees without regard to majority rule or an appropriate unit and without regard to exclusivity."
So why is it that union officials very rarely if ever bargain contracts covering only union members, and instead demand that every contract with an employer recognize one union as the "exclusive" bargaining agent for members and nonmembers alike?
The fact is that monopoly-bargaining privileges, which union officials euphemistically call "exclusive" representation, are something they deeply covet. "Exclusive" representation gives union officials uncontested power to negotiate over pay, promotions, work rules, and layoffs for all workers in a bureaucratically-determined "unit."
Under "exclusive" representation, union nonmembers cannot bypass the union and bargain on their own behalf, even if they have good reason to believe they could get a better contract that way. The U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged in the 1944 J.I. Case decision that many workers could get better pay and benefits by bargaining individually, but found that federal labor law would not permit such bargaining without union officials' consent. The "practice and philosophy of collective [monopoly] bargaining looks with suspicion on such individual advantages," explained the court opinion.
Even where an "exclusive" bargaining contract does not include any provision authorizing the forced collection of dues from nonmembers, or where such provisions are out-and-out forbidden by a state Right to Work law, "exclusivity" is an effective tool for corralling employees into a union.
Of course, there is nothing in the law to prevent a union from seeking to be recognized as the bargaining agent only for its members employed at a particular enterprise. And there is also nothing in the law to prevent a union that already has an "exclusive" bargaining contract to renounce that privilege and seek to bargain for its members only.
But union officials virtually never take advantage of these options, because a monopoly is what they want.
AFL-CIO Estimates That 200,000 Private-
Sector Workers Are Unionized Annually
Through Sweetheart Deals With Employers
In addition to taking advantage of federal and state laws forcing employers, under certain circumstances, to recognize unions as employees' "exclusive" representatives, Big Labor, according its own figures, even more frequently obtains "exclusive" bargaining power through sweetheart agreements with employers.
Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, a staunch ally of Organized Labor, has reported (in her February 2000 paper, "The American Labour Movement and the Resurgence in Union Organizing") that the AFL-CIO estimates that as many as 200,000 private-sector workers nationwide become unionized every year as a result of union officials' cutting deals with employers who expect thereby either to stop being harassed or to win concessions.
As Dr. Bronfenbrenner and many others have noted, employers most often cut deals recognizing unions as their employees' "exclusive" bargaining agents as a result of ongoing or threatened picketing, boycotts, and pressure campaigns by third parties. Only a relatively small minority of so-called "voluntary" recognitions occur because the employer believes a mandatory recognition is imminent.
By the AFL-CIO's estimate, then, two-thirds or more of current private-sector union organizing is done through sweetheart deals. In recent years, the number of employees annually unionized through mandatory recognitions resulting from National Labor Relations Board-sponsored elections or card counts has never significantly exceeded 100,000, and has on more than one occasion been much lower than that.
Across the World, Government-Authorized
'Exclusive' Bargaining Is Rare, and Getting Rarer
For the past 70 years, U.S. labor law has exhibited such a profound bias in favor of union monopoly, and so thoroughly reinforced union officials' self-serving claims that monopoly unionism is the only kind of unionism worth talking about, that the very idea of members-only bargaining may seem odd to some Americans.
But at least since the collapse of the Soviet Empire more than a decade ago, members-only bargaining has been by far the predominant form of unionism on the world scene.
Even pro-forced unionism journalist Karin Chenoweth admitted in "A Hidden Agenda," a paper prepared for the AFL-CIO-funded League for Industrial Democracy nearly two decades ago, "France and Italy have such a [members-only] system, as do other European countries."
Since Ms. Chenoweth wrote her paper, at least two countries that formerly authorized "exclusive" bargaining (New Zealand and Australia) have switched to systems in which individual workers may bargain for themselves, and enjoyed above-average growth in production, productivity, and real wages and salaries since they did.
In fact, according to Dr. Charles Baird, the chairman of the Economics Department at California State University, Hayward, and an expert in comparative labor law, the U.S. and Canada are the only major countries in the world today that legally authorize "exclusive" bargaining.
Furthermore, as noted above, nothing in U.S. law would prevent union officials from engaging in members-only bargaining if that were what they wanted. The experience of dozens of other countries shows that it is a viable alternative.
Therefore, union officials' argument that state Right to Work laws allow union nonmembers a so-called "free ride," and unions have no choice but to bargain on such nonmembers' behalf, is simply phony.
Facebook
Twitter