This law is one of the most dramatic changes to US Labor Law in nearly 75 years! Basically it is allowing unions to sidestep employee's current right to vote in a private manner. This bill would allow unions to be guaranteed the right to represent workers by the National Labor Relations Board if they collected signed authorization cards from 50% plus one of employees in a bargaining jurisdiction. This is referred to as "card check", during an organizing effort.
The employers would then have 90 days to agree on a contract governing all terms of employment conditions. If an agreement is not reached in this timeframe, negotiations would be referred to a government mediation agency. If no agreement after 30 days of mediation, an arbitrator is brought in and would establish a mandatory two year contract that would be binding on both labor and management.
What are the areas of concern with this proposed change?
Employees lose the private ballot option and could be coerced into signing a card that a private ballot may otherwise allow them to oppose.
Many employees do not want to be part of a union. Actually according to Society For Human Resources (SHRM) article quoting Manesh Rath, an attorney with Keller and Heckman, typically when more than 50% of employees sign union cards, the majority are against having a union.
It simply sacrifices employee freedom to make up their own minds that secret ballots allowed them.
With the time restrictions on reaching and writing an agreement and the ability of an arbitrator to write a contract in the event of management and labor cannot reach agreement means someone outside of the organization would be writing policy/contracts for that organization including deciding on health care benefits and how to handle/manage employees.
