Patrick Henry made a cameo at the Omni Hotel on Tuesday, where he accepted a parchment document and marched out of the room while a fife and drum corps supplied the cadence. The reason for the pageantry and not-so-subtle metaphors: a gathering of more than 200 business leaders signing letters addressed to Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb, urging them to oppose a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize.
The gathering was the first major event of the Virginians for Workplace Fairness, a coalition of more than 60 trade organizations that includes the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Virginia FREE, Virginia Transportation Alliance and the Virginia Retail Federation.
While business leaders inside had their photos taken with the faux-Henry, about 40 union protestors marched outside in the rain. They said the current system allows companies to routinely intimidate would-be union members and use the legal system to delay votes that would authorize unions. According to a 2007 study conducted by two MIT professors, only one in five cases nationwide that filed an election petition ultimately reached a first contract.
To form a union under current law, labor organizers must get 30 percent or more of a company’s employees to sign a card in support of the union. Organizers then send the petition to the National Labor Relations Board (a federal agency), which schedules a secret ballot election within 40 days. That vote determines whether or not the union will be recognized.
Virginia is a right-to-work state, which means employees do not have to join a union to work but are covered under the same contract as union workers at their company. There are a handful of big unionized companies in Richmond, including Dominion, Philip Morris, Verizon, Reynolds and the Defense Supply Depot.
The new bill, the Employee Free Choice Act 2009, would eliminate the secret ballot election if more than 50 percent of the employees sign the card. If an organizer can get a majority to sign the card and the NLRB approves the signatures, then the union is recognized. That would cut down on the chance for companies to delay the vote or intimidate workers who might want to vote for a union, said Jim Leaman, president of the Virginia AFL-CIO, an organization that represents local unions in Virginia.
But Mike Coakley, senior project manager of C.J. Coakley Company in Falls Church, spoke inside the Omni at the event and said the proposed law would open the door to union fraud and intimidation. The company constructs commercial interiors.
In 1997, he said, a union organizer was able to obtain the required number of signatures at his company to hold a ballot election, but Coakley said the organizer obtained those signatures under the pretense that the employees were signing a safety form.
“The NRLB determined the signatures justified an election of our employees even though we had 30 men willing to testify that they did not sign a union card,” Cloakey said. “If the proposed new law had been the law back then, we would have been forced into a bargaining unit.” That unionization effort was defeated by ballot vote.
When a union is recognized, the union and the company must reach a collective bargaining agreement. Under current law, there is no timetable to reach an agreement. Under the proposed law, employers and unions have 120 days to reach an agreement before a third-party mediator has the right to impose a binding two-year agreement.
Greg Robertson, a partner at Hunton & Williams and co-head of the firm’s labor and employment team, said the bill is being pushed by the unions to increase their membership. The number of union workers is at an all-time low, with 7.5 percent of private sector workers belongomg to a union. Fifty years ago, that figure was 45 percent.
“It’s not really about the middle class or leveling the playing field,” Robertson said. “It’s about the fact [that] labor unions have lost millions of members and hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 40 years of decline.”
Robertson said that by removing the ballot process, intimidation from organizers and employees would cause workers to be pressured into signing a card.
“If they choose a union, so be it, and if they don’t, so be that, but it’s a choice they make in private and not with someone standing over their shoulders,” Robertson said.
More unionization equals a higher cost of doing business, according to George Newstrom, president and chief operating officer of Lee Technologies in Fairfax.
“My industry has to be very competitive across the world,” Newstrom said. “If my costs go up, I stop being competitive, therefore I have to put the jobs where I can be the most competitive.”
“If this happens, it’s not going to be just out of Virginia, it’s going to be out of the United States,” he said.
Newstrom was the first secretary of technology, under Warner’s term as governor. He said that he doesn’t know how Warner will vote but that he hopes that he votes against the bill. He said that the current system doesn’t need to change.
“Both sides, the union and the employer, get 40 days to make their case in a legal, open manner,” Newstrom said. “You get to hear both sides. That’s the democratic process.”
Leaman, the Virginia AFL-CIO leader, said that over the years, lawyers have learned how to navigate their way around the old legislation, which was passed in 1935 as a way of encouraging unions.
“With about a 15 percent success rate, that’s no longer effective policy,” Leaman said. “Once a company finds out employers are trying to unionize, they throw up impediments and inundate employees with anti-union messages. They also fire employees that may want to join,” he said, although that is illegal. “They have a captive audience and can ask for one-on-one meetings to put forth their information. We think that’s one-sided.”
The debate is of most concern to big businesses, he said. “They are trying to scare small businesses into thinking this is somehow an attack on them,” he said. The smallest number of employees a company typically has before there is union interest is 50 or 60, Leaman said. That does not include tradespeople such as carpenters or electricians.
As for the mandatory arbitration component of the legislation, Leaman said that arbitration is an accepted practice in business of solving problems and that the past record where each side has stated its wishes is included in the record.
More reading:
The Washington Post: Unions Making Presence Felt in Va.
The Washington Post: What leaders in Washington think of the legislation
The Times-Dispatch: Warner pulled by business, labor on ‘card check’
Patrick Henry made a cameo at the Omni Hotel on Tuesday, where he accepted a parchment document and marched out of the room while a fife and drum corps supplied the cadence. The reason for the pageantry and not-so-subtle metaphors: a gathering of more than 200 business leaders signing letters addressed to Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb, urging them to oppose a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize.
The gathering was the first major event of the Virginians for Workplace Fairness, a coalition of more than 60 trade organizations that includes the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Virginia FREE, Virginia Transportation Alliance and the Virginia Retail Federation.
While business leaders inside had their photos taken with the faux-Henry, about 40 union protestors marched outside in the rain. They said the current system allows companies to routinely intimidate would-be union members and use the legal system to delay votes that would authorize unions. According to a 2007 study conducted by two MIT professors, only one in five cases nationwide that filed an election petition ultimately reached a first contract.
To form a union under current law, labor organizers must get 30 percent or more of a company’s employees to sign a card in support of the union. Organizers then send the petition to the National Labor Relations Board (a federal agency), which schedules a secret ballot election within 40 days. That vote determines whether or not the union will be recognized.
Virginia is a right-to-work state, which means employees do not have to join a union to work but are covered under the same contract as union workers at their company. There are a handful of big unionized companies in Richmond, including Dominion, Philip Morris, Verizon, Reynolds and the Defense Supply Depot.
The new bill, the Employee Free Choice Act 2009, would eliminate the secret ballot election if more than 50 percent of the employees sign the card. If an organizer can get a majority to sign the card and the NLRB approves the signatures, then the union is recognized. That would cut down on the chance for companies to delay the vote or intimidate workers who might want to vote for a union, said Jim Leaman, president of the Virginia AFL-CIO, an organization that represents local unions in Virginia.
But Mike Coakley, senior project manager of C.J. Coakley Company in Falls Church, spoke inside the Omni at the event and said the proposed law would open the door to union fraud and intimidation. The company constructs commercial interiors.
In 1997, he said, a union organizer was able to obtain the required number of signatures at his company to hold a ballot election, but Coakley said the organizer obtained those signatures under the pretense that the employees were signing a safety form.
“The NRLB determined the signatures justified an election of our employees even though we had 30 men willing to testify that they did not sign a union card,” Cloakey said. “If the proposed new law had been the law back then, we would have been forced into a bargaining unit.” That unionization effort was defeated by ballot vote.
When a union is recognized, the union and the company must reach a collective bargaining agreement. Under current law, there is no timetable to reach an agreement. Under the proposed law, employers and unions have 120 days to reach an agreement before a third-party mediator has the right to impose a binding two-year agreement.
Greg Robertson, a partner at Hunton & Williams and co-head of the firm’s labor and employment team, said the bill is being pushed by the unions to increase their membership. The number of union workers is at an all-time low, with 7.5 percent of private sector workers belongomg to a union. Fifty years ago, that figure was 45 percent.
“It’s not really about the middle class or leveling the playing field,” Robertson said. “It’s about the fact [that] labor unions have lost millions of members and hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 40 years of decline.”
Robertson said that by removing the ballot process, intimidation from organizers and employees would cause workers to be pressured into signing a card.
“If they choose a union, so be it, and if they don’t, so be that, but it’s a choice they make in private and not with someone standing over their shoulders,” Robertson said.
More unionization equals a higher cost of doing business, according to George Newstrom, president and chief operating officer of Lee Technologies in Fairfax.
“My industry has to be very competitive across the world,” Newstrom said. “If my costs go up, I stop being competitive, therefore I have to put the jobs where I can be the most competitive.”
“If this happens, it’s not going to be just out of Virginia, it’s going to be out of the United States,” he said.
Newstrom was the first secretary of technology, under Warner’s term as governor. He said that he doesn’t know how Warner will vote but that he hopes that he votes against the bill. He said that the current system doesn’t need to change.
“Both sides, the union and the employer, get 40 days to make their case in a legal, open manner,” Newstrom said. “You get to hear both sides. That’s the democratic process.”
Leaman, the Virginia AFL-CIO leader, said that over the years, lawyers have learned how to navigate their way around the old legislation, which was passed in 1935 as a way of encouraging unions.
“With about a 15 percent success rate, that’s no longer effective policy,” Leaman said. “Once a company finds out employers are trying to unionize, they throw up impediments and inundate employees with anti-union messages. They also fire employees that may want to join,” he said, although that is illegal. “They have a captive audience and can ask for one-on-one meetings to put forth their information. We think that’s one-sided.”
The debate is of most concern to big businesses, he said. “They are trying to scare small businesses into thinking this is somehow an attack on them,” he said. The smallest number of employees a company typically has before there is union interest is 50 or 60, Leaman said. That does not include tradespeople such as carpenters or electricians.
As for the mandatory arbitration component of the legislation, Leaman said that arbitration is an accepted practice in business of solving problems and that the past record where each side has stated its wishes is included in the record.
More reading:
The Washington Post: Unions Making Presence Felt in Va.
The Washington Post: What leaders in Washington think of the legislation
The Times-Dispatch: Warner pulled by business, labor on ‘card check’
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