3 Big employers offer EFCA compromise
March 31, 2009 by Jim GiulianoPosted in: Employment law, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Now that swing vote Arlen Specter has said he won’t support the Employee Free Choice Act — and the act faces rough sledding in Congress — three national employers say they have a compromise to make (almost) everyone happy.
The three employers are Costco, Starbucks, and Whole Foods. They’ve hired former Clinton Administration attorney Lanny Davis to work the cloakrooms in Congress and spread the idea — which they’re calling “The Third Way.” Here are the three main parts of the proposal:
- No card check or mandatory arbitration. Instead, there would be secret-ballot elections that would have to be conducted by a definite, ironclad date from the time a union petitions for an election.
- Union “equal access” to employees during working hours. Under unspecified conditions, union organizers would be able to make their case to workers during working hours — on the presumption that employers would be making their case against organizing.
- Tougher penalties for unfair labor practices. There would be no mandatory arbitration wherein contract terms are dictated — as is proposed in the EFCA now – but it would apparently include an expedited timetable for negotiations.
Another group from the service industry is offering another compromise also with three parts:
- Unions get equal access to employees if 30% of employees sign cards.
- If a union succeeds in getting more than 50% of employees to sign cards, then it may petition the NLRB for an election to be conducted in 15 days.
- If a union succeeds in getting 70% of the employees to sign cards, then the union would be certified without a secret-ballot election (EFCA as currently drafted permits certification once more than 50% of employees sign cards).
Tags: Arlen Specter, Costco, EFCA, Employee Free Choice Act, starbucks, Whole Foods
April 6th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
If Lanny Davis has his hands in it, you can bet it won’t be pro-management.
I like what Fred Smith of FedEx said recently and that was if the card check bill passes, they won’t be buying over $30 B in airplanes from Boeing. Now that’s a free market decision and solution to the problem. Good for him.
April 9th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
WHY does there even have to be EFCA. Employees are already free now to choose to sign on union. This new act almost guarantees that the union will be able to force any company they want into a union operation. So much for the freedom to be free to do business the way you want to. There are plenty of union companies, if employees want to be union – let them just join one of those companies and leave us law-abiding citizens alone. Every American is entitled to the right of free choice. Every worker in any industry deserve the fundamental right to a federally supervised private-ballot election when deciding whether or not to become unionized. Without a private ballot, workers who were coerced or intimidated into signing authorization cards would, with EFCA, not have the abilitiy to change their vote in private.
And really, it is fair to allow unions to interrupt our employees during hours they are being paid to be working, just so they can convince them to sign union??!! DOES NO ONE SEE ANYTHING WRONG IN ALL THIS!!!!
April 13th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I remember when the Employer had the strong hand and the employee lived in fear of being fired. I have also seen when the Unions had the strong hand and the employee lived in fear of being bullied. I have no problem with Unions, but I have a definite problem with the elimination of “secret ballot” for any kind of election.
I believe an employee should have some protection against both the employer and the union, when it comes to being bullied. I watched a majority vote to unionize a manufacturing plant and a demand for a $.25 raise. I saw the plant closed down as people walked out until demands were met. Once the demands were met, everyone went back to work. But they had to work almost a full year to make up the money lost while they sat out on the strike.
When Unions were super strong, their demands were so great that the the Steel Industry collapsed and we are seeing the same thing hitting the Auto Industry. The employer has to make a profit. The unions have caused the collapse of industry. You cannot force the employer to make the employee rich.
On the other hand, management should not be in charge of their salaries and bonuses either. When companies allow management to strip a company into collapse, they are as guilty as the unions. Perhaps some percentage quota could be placed on management and employees, so that the employer can make a profit, the business could continue to run and everyone has a decent living.
Unfortunately, when the people making these decisions are the congressman we allow to set their own salaries and bonuses and retirement. The employees don’t have that luxury, but we keep voting in the same guys over and over again. So bottom line, who is to blame?
April 14th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I think a lot of what is causing this backlash is the excessive compensation at the highest levels of companies. A lot of people probably feel like it is a private club and the presidents of one company are on the board of another and the president of that company is on the other’s boards. The top-leaders all fuel each other’s high levels of compensation while the lower-level employees are often working double-shifts or second jobs to pay the bills.
These card-check bills probably go way too far in the opposite direction, but I can see why some employees may support these (without understanding the overall consequences). I believe a lot of what is coming out of the current Congress and Executive branches are direct results of employees feeling they do not have any real power to influence anything. Unfortunately if the EFCA passes (or some semlance of a law passes), then employees may instead fall subject to being railroaded by unions instead of by business. Employees should feel free to be able to vote for/against unionization without any undue pressure by unions or by business.
If business wants to keep big-brother and the unions out, then they really need to re-evaluate what senior leadership is doing at these companies. I don’t want to see unions in every workplace, but if business doesn’t wake up and fix these inequities on their own, people will have the government do it through legislation. The government version of any fix is definitely going to be worse than free-market choices.