NAWER

Issue Brief - The Case for the Secret Ballot Protection Act

Executive Summary

 

The bill ensures that, where a union desires to represent workers as a collective bargaining representative, the decision is made by the employees in a secret ballot election conducted by the government. The SBPA forbids an employer from granting a union collective bargaining rights based merely upon the presentation of notoriously unreliable, union-solicited authorization cards from a purported employee majority. It also forbids a union from “causing to attempting to cause” an employer to grant recognition to a union without an election. The SBPA, however, does not affect existing collective-bargaining relationships.

The bill is needed to correct an anomaly in American labor law that unions have exploited in recent years. The concepts of employee free choice and majority rule in the selection of bargaining representatives are codified in the National Labor Relations Act. But case law incongruously leaves it up to employers to determine whether employees may make a choice about union representation through a government-sponsored secret ballot election.

Over the past decade, unions have increasingly taken advantage of this loophole to pressure employers into signing “neutrality/card check agreements” (“neutrality agreements”). Under a typical neutrality agreement, an employer agrees in advance to recognize a union when the union submits signed authorization cards from a simple majority of employees in the appropriate unit. An authorization card on its face signifies an employee’s desire for representation by the union. The problem, however, is that such authorization cards are frequently obtained by union organizers or supporters by misrepresentation, peer pressure, harassment, intimidation, and even coercion or forgery. Neutrality agreements themselves are frequently achieved by exerting economic pressure against an employer and its suppliers, customers, and bankers. This pressure may include such unsavory tactics as filing frivolous administrative charges and lawsuits, inciting community groups and leaders, and stirring up bad publicity.

Benefits of enacting the SBPA include

1. The Law: Employee Free Choice, Majority Rule, and Exclusive Representation

Enacted in 1935, and amended in 1947, 1959, and 1974, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is America’s basic labor relations law. § 7 of the Act grants employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” The same section likewise explicitly recognizes the right of employees “to refrain from any or all of such activities.” In the words of the Supreme Court, [T]he NLRA confers rights only on employees, not on unions or their nonemployee organizers.” Lechmere, Inc. v. NLRB, 502 U.S. 527, 532 (1992) [emphasis in original].

Where § 7 of the Act enshrines the principle of employee free choice in law, § 9 embodies the concepts of majority rule and exclusive representation. Under § 9, unions “designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees” who form an “appropriate” bargaining unit become the “exclusive representative of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment.” In other words, where employees choose union representation, the law “extinguishes the individual’s power to order his own relations with his employer,” NLRB v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 175, 180 (1967), and hands it over to a third party. Employees who seek to bargain directly with the employer may be summarily fired. Emporium Capwell Co. v. Western Addition Community Org., 420 U.S. 50, 67-69, 72 (1975). Not only that, a union may impose (and collect in state court) fines on members for violating its internal rules, such as against crossing picket lines and working during a strike, Allis-Chalmers, supra, or exceeding union-imposed production ceilings, Scofield v. NLRB, 394 U.S. 423 (1969). Finally, in a majority of states, union-represented employees are likely to be subject to heavy dues requirements as a result of “union security clauses,” negotiated between employers and unions, which make continued employment contingent upon payment. See § 8(a) (3) of the Act (first proviso).

Thus, the decision whether to unionize carries very grave implications for employees. Although § 9 provides for the conduct of secret ballot elections by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to determine whether employees desire representation (where 30% or more of the employees in the appropriate unit sign authorization cards favoring unionization and file a petition with the agency), the Act unfortunately does not require that a majority be established through a government-supervised election. Instead, as developed under case law, an employer confronted with a union demand for recognition as bargaining agent is allowed to choose whether to permit a secret ballot election with strict safeguards or voluntarily to recognize the union based merely upon dubious authorization cards signed by a majority of employees designating the union as the employees’ representative. Linden Lumber Div. v. NLRB, 419 U.S. 301, 310 (1974).

To understand why this is a flaw in the law that must be remedied by Congress, it is necessary to compare the carefully supervised NLRB election process with unregulated, unilateral recognition of a union by an employer.

2. The NLRB Election Process v. Employer Recognition

As far back as 1948, the NLRB set the high standard for the conduct of its representation election that it still follows. In that year, the Board declared, “In election proceedings, it is the Board’s function to provide a laboratory in which an experiment may be conducted, under conditions as nearly ideal as possible, to determine the uninhibited desires of the employees. It is our duty to establish those conditions; it is also our duty to determine whether they have been fulfilled.” General Shoe Corp., 77 NLRB 124, 127. The Board emphasized in the same case that, “An election can serve its true purpose only if the surrounding conditions enable employees to register a free and untrammeled choice for or against a bargaining representative.” Id. at 126.

So how does the NLRB election process protect employee free choice? The election is customarily held at the employer’s place of business, with standard NLRB election notices posted in prominent locations at least three days before the election. The notice explains in detail the employees’ rights and informs employees of the time, date, location and voting procedures. On the day of the election, the NLRB agent brings a portable ballot box, ballots, and voting booths to the site. Neither company managers or supervisors nor union representatives may be present for the balloting. An equal number of observers for the employer and the union may be present, however. Electioneering is strictly prohibited in the voting area. As each employee votes, his or her name is checked off, in the presence of the observers, from a previously agreed-upon list of eligible voters. Each voter enters the polling booth and marks the ballot in secret after which the ballot is deposited in the ballot box, which has previously been inspected and sealed until the voting. When all eligible voters have cast ballots, the ballot box is opened and the ballots are counted by the NLRB agent in the presence of both sides’ observers; the tally of ballots is presented and signed by the Board agent and the observers. Well established procedures exist for the challenge of ballots by the employer or union, and either side may file objections to the conduct of the election, or objections to conduct that occurred during the campaign period. So-called “objectionable conduct” requires the Board to set aside the results of a tainted election and order a new election even if no violations of statutory law (“unfair labor practices”) occurred. Examples of such objectionable conduct, besides electioneering, include prolonged conversation regardless of content between parties and voters waiting in line to vote, coercive conduct by supervisors on behalf of a union, “captive audience” speeches by either side within 24 hours of an election, appeals to racial prejudice, personal list-keeping of who voted by observers, and alteration of Board documents to imply endorsement of a party.

The impartiality of the process is evidently recognized by both sides because NLRB data cited on Capitol Hill shows that in only 3% of about 14,000 elections occurring between1999-2003, did either party file election objections. Developments in Labor Law: Examining Trends and Tactics in Labor Organization Campaigns, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, 108th Congress, 2d Sess., Serial No. 108-52, April 22, 2004, at 25 (hereafter Subcommittee Hearing on Labor Organization Campaigns).

The NLRB election process is not only fair but efficient. In FY 2004, according to recently released agency statistics, the median time between the filing of a petition for an election and an election was only 39 days, and 93.6% of all representation elections were held within 56 days of a petition filing. Summary of Operations (Fiscal Year 2004), Office of the General Counsel, National Labor Relations Board, Memorandum GC 05-01 (Dec. 10, 2004), at 1.

When an employer, however, makes a private agreement to recognize a union if it presents a majority of authorization cards designating the union as collective bargaining representative, these safeguards are stripped away. The union, an interested party, controls the election process, rather than the NLRB, a neutral government body. There is no secret ballot election. Instead, union organizers or pro-union employees solicit employees to make their choice right in front of representatives of one party. Naturally, this opens the door to use of peer pressure, harassment, misleading statements, improper promises, intimidation, and sometimes outright coercion and forgery to obtain the necessary signatures. Thus, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has noted that people will often sign opposing petitions to avoid hurting the feelings of the solicitor, especially in union campaigns where the opinion of peers and “potentially powerful union organizers may weigh heavily in the balance,” NLRB v. S.S. Logan Packaging Co., 386 F.2d 562, 565 (1967), declaring that, “It would be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a ‘card check,’ unless it were an employer’s request for an open show of hands,” id.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has similarly remarked:

Although the union in this case had a card majority, by itself this has little significance. Workers sometimes sign union authorization cards not because they intend to vote for the union in the election but to avoid offending the person who asks them to sign, often a fellow worker, or simply to get the person off their back, since signing commits the workers to nothing (except that if enough workers sign, the employer may decide to recognize the union without an election).

NLRB v. Village IX, Inc., 723 F.2d 1360, 1371 (7th Cir. 1983). Of course, when a union and an employer agree in advance, that recognition will follow presentation of cards from a majority in the bargaining unit, card signing is a very significant act. Employees who reasonably believe the employer wants to recognize the union have little incentive not to sign, particularly where they know that union officials will soon exercise considerable sway over their livelihood, including deciding whether to process their grievances, under the principle of exclusive representation.

In fact, this last consideration has been recognized by the Supreme Court, in NLRB v. Savair Mfg. Co., 414 U.S. 270, 280-81 (1973),

If we respect, as we must, the statutory right of employees to resist efforts to unionize a plant, we cannot assume that unions exercising powers are wholly benign towards their antagonists whether they be nonunion protagonists or the employer. The failure to sign a recognition slip may well seem ominous to nonunionists who fear that if they do not sign they will face a wrathful union regime, should the union win.

All in all, it is no wonder that the Supreme Court has also stated that, “[S]ecret elections are generally the most satisfactory—indeed the preferred—method of ascertaining whether a union has majority support,” and has referred to the “acknowledged superiority” of elections over cards. NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575, 602 (1969); accord: Linden Lumber Div. v. NLRB, supra, 419 U.S. 301, 304 (1974). The NLRB has said the same thing many times, for example: “[E]lections are the preferred means of testing employees’ support.” Levitz Furniture Co. of the Pacific, Inc., 333 NLRB 717, 725-26 (2001).

These are not merely “ivory tower” pronouncements from cloistered courts and the NLRB. Concrete examples of union misconduct in securing authorization cards abound. The HR Policy Association has assembled a list of scores of reported NLRB bases involving cards solicited through pressure, peer pressure, forgery, misrepresentation, misleading statements, coercion, and promised benefits. HR Policy Assoc. Memoranda 02-08 (2002), 04-10 (2004).

In two cases now pending at the NLRB, Dana Corp., 8-RD-1976, and Metaldyne Corp., 6-RD-1518; -19, employee affidavits revealed the tactics of union organizers. In both cases, the union had achieved a neutrality agreement with the employer for recognition based upon a card majority. In Dana, it was reported that union organizers, given worker home addresses under the agreement, pressured employees to sign cards both at work and at home and misled the employees about the purpose and finality of the cards, and that many employees signed merely to get the union “off their backs.” In Metaldyne, similar harassment and pressure by the union to secure authorization cards was reported with, again, many employees signing just “to get the UAW organizers off their back.” Within days of the recognition in each case, more than 35% of the Dana employees signed a petition for an NLRB election to oust the union, and more than 50% signed a similar petition at Metaldyne. Under a principle now being revisited by the NLRB, both petitions were dismissed at the Regional level, because the voluntary recognition in each case prohibited an NLRB election until the parties bargained for a “reasonable” period of time. Sound Contractors Assn.,162 NLRB 364 (1966).

A similar story was told in Congressional testimony not long ago during hearings on the SBPA in the 108th Congress. Richard Hermanson, an employee of Covenant Aviation Security at San Francisco International Airport, testified to union influence on employees to sign cards through harassing home visits and telephone calls, peer pressure, and misleading statements. HR 4343, Secret Ballot Protection Act of 2004, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, 108th Congress, 2d Sess., Serial No. 108-74, September 30, 2004, at 14 (hereafter, Subcommittee Hearing on the SBPA). Mr. Hermanson concluded that, “My experience over this period suggests to me that card count campaigns carry the risk of a union being granted recognition while it does not carry true majority support; that there is a big difference between a majority of signatures and majority support.” Id.

At the same hearing, Thomas Riley, an employee of Cintas Corp. in Allentown, Pennsylvania, complained of harassing visits from union organizers to employee homes, including his own, leading him to declare that, id. at 28,

We have a process supervised by the government so that individuals like me can go into a voting booth and check yes or no as to whether I want to be in a union. Nobody, either my employer or the union, would know how I vote. I would rather—I would vote, or I’d be free to vote with my heart, not based on whether or not I was concerned about my wife and my family or whether union organizers might continue to bother them at home, or not concerned about whether anyone might follow me home at night or because I felt pressured to signing a union card just because I wanted to be left alone.

No more eloquent statement can be made about the superiority of the NLRB election process over the union-controlled card solicitation process.

3. The Union Push for Neutrality Agreements: Background and Contents

Especially over the past ten years, unions have increasingly shunned the NLRB election process and shifted their organizing efforts toward obtaining neutrality agreements. This tactic is sometimes called “bargaining to organize” in place of traditional “organizing to bargain” because its main focus is securing employer cooperation to organize its workforce instead of organizing among the employees and then presenting the employer with a recognition demand or filing a petition for an NLRB election.

The reason for increasing use of this tactic is the downward spiral of union membership among U.S. wage and salary workers going back 20 years and more. According to the most recent statistics made available by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), total union membership in 2004 was 12.5%, down from 12.9% the previous year. This compares with 20.1% as recently as 1983. Significantly, private sector union membership dropped to 7.9% in 2004 compared with 8.2% in 2003. Private sector union membership is only about half what it was in 1983. See “Union Membership Rate Dropped To 12.5 Percent, Continuing 20-Year Decline,” Daily Labor Rep. (BNA), Jan. 28, 2005, at AA-1.

According to AFL-CIO President John T. Sweeney, more than 80% of workers in 2002 were organized outside of the normal NLRB election process by obtaining neutrality agreements or otherwise getting employers to grant unions recognition without an election. Remarks at AFL-CIO Executive Council Meeting, March 20, 2004. This trend spotlights the injustice inherent in existing law that allows an employer to trade for union peace access to a fair, free, and democratic election that should belong to employees themselves.

Two issues involving neutrality agreements require some exploration: what they contain and how they are obtained.

At the heart of a neutrality agreement is the employer’s consent to recognize a union without a secret ballot NLRB election. Usually, the employer agrees to recognition upon a showing of allegedly majority support based upon collection of authorization cards from employees in a designated unit. The verification of the cards’ validity often, but not always, is committed to a neutral third party. Where such an agreement governs, as noted, control of the organizing process is removed from the “laboratory conditions” environment protected by the NLRB and the secret ballot and entrusted to the union, an interested party, motivated to secure the necessary number of authorization cards by whatever means necessary. The methods used to obtain signatures may range from outright misrepresentation concerning the purpose of the cards (e.g., only to get an election, to obtain health insurance or some other benefit, etc.), peer pressure; to harassment in the form of home visits, repeated telephoning, badgering at work; to forgery; and even to intimidation and coercion. While some such means may cross the line to illegality, employees are often reluctant to file charges and give evidence when the employer and union are seen as allies collaborating to ensure the union is recognized. Less serious “objectionable” conduct that would violate NLRB election standards and would require the government to set aside a union-won election is perfectly permissible when a recognition agreement is in force. The sanctity of a private decision made in a voting booth is replaced by one-sided solicitation of employees in the “anything goes” atmosphere of the shop floor or during an often intimidating “home visit” by union organizers.

Terms also often found in neutrality agreements include:

Limits on employer speech. Neutrality agreements commonly have provisions that prohibit the employer from communicating with employees about the union during the campaign. For example, an agreement between Heartland Industrial Partners and the United Steelworkers stated that, in general, the company “will not in any way, directly or indirectly involve itself in efforts by the Union to represent the Company’s employees, or efforts, by its employees to investigate or pursue unionization.” The UAW’s model recognition agreement provides that the employer may not “communicate in a negative, derogatory or demeaning nature about the other party (including the other party’s motives, integrity, character or performance), or about labor unions generally.” Thus, unlike in a traditional NLRB campaign, employees are not treated to a free and open discussion about the merits of unionization, but must instead rely only upon biased solicitation and communication from the union.

Non-opposition statement. Both the Heartland-Steelworkers neutrality agreement and the UAW model neutrality agreement contain provisions, as is frequent, requiring that the employer notify employees in writing that it does not oppose the union’s organizing efforts. Employees quite reasonably are likely to infer that such a statement is a “wink and nod” encouraging them to back the union drive.

Access to personal information. Neutrality agreements often give unions a list of the names, jobs titles, work locations, home addresses, and telephone numbers of employees, helping organizers to put workers “on the spot” at the plant or facility, or to make unsettling home visits or harassing phone calls.

Access to premises and “captive audience” speeches. Some neutrality agreements require employers to make available their premises for union solicitation and distribution of literature, and may even make work time available for mandatory meetings extolling the virtue of unionization. This occurred in both the Metaldyne and Dana cases mentioned in part 2, above. In Metaldyne, a video from one of the owners played during a mandatory meeting encouraged the employees to accept the UAW into the plant, and stated that it was “a win-win situation for all of us.” In Dana, management and the union insisted during a “captive audience” presentation that the recognition of the UAW would help in getting new business from the Big Three automakers.

Other provisions. Other terms often found in neutrality agreements give preferential hiring rights to laid-off union-represented employees at unorganized locations, require early start of contract negotiations and ultimately interest arbitration after a defined period of bargaining, extension of the neutrality agreement to affiliated companies, and application of the neutrality agreement to new business entities established by the employer in the same industry.

4. The Union Push for Neutrality Agreements: How They Are Obtained

No less disturbing than the contents of these neutrality agreements are the methods used by unions to obtain them. Longtime management attorney Charles I. Cohen (also a former NLRB Member) testified before Congress in April 2004 that, “In my experience, neutrality/card check agreements are almost always the product of external leverage by unions, rather than an internal groundswell from unrepresented employees.” Subcommittee Hearing on Labor Organization Campaigns, supra, at 12.

If a union already represents some of an employer’s employees that may provide leverage to obtain neutrality agreement covering employees of the employer who are as yet unrepresented or employees of affiliated companies or of corporate entities that may be created in the future. Worse, unions may demand and receive provisions in their labor contracts under which the employer agrees to encourage other companies, such as suppliers dependent upon it for business, to enter into neutrality agreements with the union.

The UAW’s neutrality agreement with Ford, as an example, not only requires neutrality at Ford facilities, affiliates, and subsidiaries, card check recognition, and access to premises for organizers, but requires that Ford send letters to its suppliers and future suppliers stating, inter alia, that it does not object to unionization of the suppliers’ employees, that Ford has a positive relationship with the UAW, and that Ford does not discourage suppliers from entering in to a neutrality agreement with the UAW. As long as a company like Ford stops short of requiring that firms it does business with unionize (which would violate § 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act), carefully phrased, subtle “encouragement” is lawful.

Very often unions obtain these concessions in contract negotiations by making concessions in return – concessions adverse to the interests of the employees they currently represent. “[T]he United Steel Workers agreed to limit all wage increases as part of one neutrality agreement, and the United Auto Workers has apparently agreed to lower wages for its workers in order to secure a neutrality agreement with an auto parts supplier.” Paul Kersey, “Congress Should Protect Secret-Ballot Union Representation Elections,” Executive Memorandum #948, The Heritage Foundation (Nov. 12, 2004), at 2.

The UAW has entered into neutrality agreements with the Big Three Automakers and with Big Three parts suppliers such as Metaldyne and Dana Corp. (which as noted sparked employee rebellions against imposed unionization). The Communications Workers Union (CWA) has succeeded in obtaining neutrality agreements with SBC, Cingular Wireless, Verizon Wireless among others. UNITE HERE and the SEIU have also been active in negotiating neutrality agreements.

But even if a union lacks a pressure point in the form of an existing collective bargaining relationship with a targeted employer, there are many other available weapons to extract a neutrality agreement. These include filing frivolous administrative charges with agencies like the NLRB or bringing harassing lawsuits; blocking regulatory approval needed approval needed for a project; pressuring bankers, suppliers, or customers not to do business with the target company; launching negative campaigns with shareholders or investors; stirring up bad publicity in the media; and inciting community and religious groups against the employer. When several of these tactics are combined as part of an orchestrated effort, they are referred to as a “corporate campaign,” which, in the words of AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, is intended to “inflict[] upon the employer the death of a thousand cuts rather than a single blow.” “Union Officials Stress International Scope of Organizing, Bargaining Campaigns,” Daily Labor Rep. (BNA), (Nov. 16, 1992), at A-1.

The first corporate campaign was launched in the late 1970s by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union and legendary union organizer Ray Rodgers against the J.P. Stevens textile firm; more than 200 similar campaigns have been conducted since then. Companies subjected to such campaigns include Marriott International, Family Foods, Microsoft, Oregon Steel, Food Lion, Nike, Labor Ready, Overnite Transportation, Sutter Health, and Wal-Mart. A handful of examples of actual tactics used include

• Influence exerted on the Minneapolis City Council which voted to force a developer to impose neutrality agreements on a redevelopment project, but which failed when the tactic was challenged as a violation of federal labor law.
• More than 20 regulatory complaints filed against Sutter Health by the SEIU;
• Pressure exerted by the USW on local transit authorities not to do business with Oregon Steel;
• Attempting to place pressure on Marriott through influence on large shareholders/investors.

For more detailed information, see Jarol B. Manheim, “Corporate Campaigns: Labor’s Tactic of The ‘Death of A Thousand Cuts,” Labor Watch, Capital Research Center (Jan. 2002); Eric Heubeck, “New Organizing Methods: Card Check and Neutrality Agreements,” Labor Watch, Capital Research Center (Nov. 1999).

Whatever the variety of tactics, however, the end is still the same: bringing enough coercive pressure to bear on an employer from diverse sources that it prefers to sacrifice rather than uphold its employees’ interest in deciding on unionization through an impartial secret ballot process.

Conclusion: The SBPA and its Benefits

Imagine a political election in which only one candidate is allowed to solicit voters and distribute campaign literature, in which voters must mark their “ballots” openly in the presence of that candidate’s supporters, and in which the votes are counted privately without government supervision! No American would tolerate such a regime for selecting public officeholders. Yet scores of thousands of Americans each year are forced into such a process to decide whether to be represented by a union. And that is a decision likely to have more impact upon their economic well being than any political election, because it gives an outside party an exclusive right to negotiate their wages, hours, fringe benefits, and working conditions; to compromise their grievances; and in most cases to deduct substantial fees and dues from their paychecks.

Union members themselves recognize the importance of secret ballot elections. A poll conducted in June 2004 among 703 union members nationwide by the respected polling firm Zogby International showed that 84% believed that employees should have the right to vote on union representation; that 71% agree that the current NLRB-run election process is fair; and that 63% believe that stronger laws are need to protect the existing secret ballot election system. See Subcommittee Hearing on the SBPA, supra, reprinted as appendix, at 47-50.

The only way to restore democracy for all to the American workplace is to enact the SBPA. The SBPA would guarantee employees the right to a secret ballot vote on whether to unionize. Further, the bill would make it unfair labor practice for an employer to recognize a union without an NLRB election, and would make it likewise unlawful for a union to “to cause or attempt to cause an employer to recognize or bargain collectively with a representative of a labor organization that has not been selected by a majority of such employees in a secret ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.” A “grandfather” clause, however, would preserve existing collective bargaining relationships.

Enactment of the SBPA would be consistent with the opinion of Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, author of the NLRA, who declared, “[D]etermination by an impartial governmental body is the first prerequisite to establishing the foundation upon which collective bargaining must rest.” I Leg. Hist. of the National Labor Relations Act, 1935 (1949) at 1422. And it would receive the wisdom of the Supreme Court itself, which has stated that, “In terms of getting on with the problems of inaugurating regimes of industrial peace, the policy of encouraging secret elections under the Act is favored.” Linden Lumber Div. v. NLRB, supra, 419 U.S. 301, 307.

The effect of the bill would be to remove the anomalous situation under current law in which the employer decides whether the employees shall have a right to a secret ballot election, and guarantees that right to employees in law. The stringent “laboratory conditions” set by the NLRB to determine employee desires in a secret vote would thus prevail in every organizing situation, not just those where the employer happens to favor it. By removing authorization cards as a means of securing union recognition, employees will not be subject to misleading statements, peer pressure, harassment, intimidation, coercion, or even forgery of their names. And employees, as well as the employer and union, will have confidence in the outcome of a government-supervised election.

At the same time, employers will be free from coercive union tactics like bargaining table pressure to sacrifice employee interests to unrelated business interests of their own, as well as corporate campaigns that threaten their profitability and standing with their customers, suppliers, bankers, and the general public. Employers will also be spared internal strife among the workforce that occurs when employees, like those of Metaldyne and Dana, revolt against an unwanted recognition of a union based upon a neutrality agreement.

While employers are not required under the SBPA to debate the merits of unionization during an organizing campaign, they are more likely to give employees the other side of the story before entering the voting because unions will have far less incentive to exert extraneous pressure against them.

Indeed, the certainty that recognition is based upon an unimpeachable majority vote in an NLRB-conducted election is in the interests of unions as well, This idea was also aptly expressed by Senator Wagner, “[C]ollective bargaining can be really effective only when workers are sufficiently solidified in their interests to make one agreement covering all. This is possible only by majority rule.” I Leg. Hist., supra, at 1419.

In sum, Congress should act swiftly to preserve industrial democracy as an indispensable element of our American democracy by writing the SBPA into law.