Boston Globe, December 18, 2004, Saturday

Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe

December 18, 2004, Saturday THIRD EDITION

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. E1

HEADLINE: LABOR UNDER FIRE
UNIONS WORRY NLRB WILL END ORGANIZING TOOL

BYLINE: By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff

BODY:
Nearly six weeks after its efforts to unseat President Bush failed, the American labor movement is anxiously awaiting a federal decision that could seriously impede union organizing.
Labor's concerns revolve around card-check recognition, an organizing tool that lets unions form bargaining units after more than 50 percent of a workforce signs membership cards. As part of the process, employers agree to recognize the union. Card-check recognition is not new, but unions have used it more in recent years because they can sign up workers faster. It also helps them avoid time-consuming and costly union elections, labor specialists say.

But after spending $45 million to support the unsuccessful presidential bid of Democratic nominee Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, labor now fears that Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board will restrict or eliminate its right to use card-check recognition in certain circumstances. In June, the board agreed to review two cases that challenge the use of card checks. A decision on those cases is expected soon.
"If the board decides to make card check illegal, that would reverse the entire history of the board, the National Labor Relations Act and its practice," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
The national AFL-CIO has enlisted the help of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat. He is sponsoring a prolabor bill that would permit unions to be certified after it is confirmed that a majority of workers have signed cards. The bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, faces an uphill climb in a mostly Republican Congress.
Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Robert Haynes met with 49 other labor leaders and organizers this week to discuss the board and ways to strengthen organizing. "We are looking for options in Massachusetts that support organizing," said Haynes. The group also is looking for a legislative solution to what might be a negative ruling.
Card checks are a critical part of labor's arsenal at a time when membership represents 12.5 percent of the total US workforce, down from 35 percent in 1945. Labor has used it to organize hotels in Boston, casinos in Las Vegas, and hospitals across the country.
Celia Wcislo, president of the 10,000-member Service Employees International Union Local 2020, credits card-check recognition with helping her union organize health workers in the state's prison system a few years ago. The healthcare union also used it in the '90s to organize 600 workers employed by trustees of Boston Health and Hospitals, now the Boston Public Health Commission.
She said some employers would rather go along with card-check recognition than risk getting embroiled in an organizing drive that could hurt the firm's reputation or affect profits.
The US Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the practice, considers the card-check agreement a crutch that allows unions to boost their flagging ranks. Randy Johnson, vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the chamber in Washington, D.C., said some unions threaten and coerce workers who refuse to sign the cards. He said the business group favors secret-ballot elections.
But labor specialists say union elections are often fraught with problems. "Increasingly, unions have moved away from NLRB-sponsored elections because they are so difficult to win," said Thomas Juravich, director of the labor center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "Card checks allow them to move quickly. The other problem with the election process is that it can take years to get a contract. So, workers wind up feeling that justice is being delayed."
Even after workers win an election, employer appeals can cause the process to drag on for many years. In addition, election results must be certified by the labor board, a process that can take weeks, even months.
Unions worry that the card-check decision will follow on the heels of a series of recent rulings that have gone against labor. The Friday after Thanksgiving, for example, chairman Robert J. Battista, Peter C. Schaumber, and Ronald E. Meisburg, all Bush appointees, found that temporary workers employed by an agency cannot join the same union as regular employees without permission from the agency and the company where they work. That decision reversed a 2000 ruling by a Democratic board.
In other decisions this year, the NLRB has ruled that graduate students at private universities are not workers and, as a result, cannot organize a union.
The board has also said that disabled workers employed by rehabilitation programs cannot form bargaining units.

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.