U.S. Labor Law Fails to Protect Collective Bargaining

[Earth Bound Misfit]

http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/publications/general/us-labor-law-fails-to-protect-collective-bargaining.html

It’s well recognized that the ability to have a say in one’s working conditions is fundamental. That’s why the right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining is considered a human right and a measure of democracy in the industrialized world. So how is it that so few American workers have a collective voice about their working conditions? .... Blame rests with the U.S. labor law system for failing to adequately protect workers’ rights to collective bargaining.

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The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was passed to protect the right of workers in this country to “bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.” The NLRA requires that once workers form a union, the employer and the union are obligated to bargain in “good faith,” where both parties must “meet at reasonable times,” and productively confer about “wages, hours, and other terms or conditions of employment.”

Yet the Law is Easily Manipulated: A simple, but effective unionbusting strategy for employers is to avoid meaningful bargaining at all costs. "You haven’t lost until you sign a contract, consultants tell employers. Consultants advise management on how to stall or prolong the bargaining process, almost indefinitely—bargaining to the point of boredom….”

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How Employers Game the System:

Pretending to Bargain: Even though the NLRA prohibits bad faith or “surface bargaining,” the law’s interpretations are so vague that Human Rights Watch determined it is extremely difficult to assess when employers are “going through the motions of meeting with workers and making proposals and counterproposals without any intention of reaching an agreement.”

Incentives for Reaching an Impasse: The reward for employers who don’t negotiate fairly is permission to impose their own terms and conditions of employment after an impasse is reached, regardless of the recommendations of the union.

Weak Labor Law Allows the Cycle to Repeat Itself: If the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is able to prove that an employer was engaged in surface bargaining, it can only order the employer to return to negotiations and bargain in good faith. Recalcitrant employers frequently resume bad faith bargaining all over again, where as a Human Rights Watch report noted, “the same cycle can repeat itself.”