Anti-Union Governors and Employee Free Choice

https://onlabor.org/anti-union-governors-and-employee-free-choice/

June 10, 2024

By Benjamin Sachs

Following the UAW’s election victory at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, TN and its defeat at Mercedes near Tuscaloosa, AL the union has shifted the focus of its organizing efforts to the Hyundai plant in Montgomery. After Hyundai, the union will continue its $40 million drive to organize non-union auto plants across the south, including those owned and operated by Tesla, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Subaru, Mazda, and Volvo. As it does so, the UAW can expect to encounter opposition not only from many of these auto manufacturers but also from elected officials across the southern states. Elected officials are, of course, entitled to express their views on unionization. But employees are also entitled to vote in union elections that ensure a free and fair choice. Threats from public officeholders implying that unionization will lead auto plants to close or relocate interfere with that free choice. The Board should thus consider such interventions by elected officials to be objectionable conduct that, when part of a broader anti-union campaign run by the employer, can deprive workers of their right to a free and fair election.

Past is most likely prologue here. In the run-up to the Volkswagen and Mercedes elections, six governors, including Kay Ivey of Alabama and Bill Lee of Tennessee (along with the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas) penned a joint letter “opposing UAW’s unionization campaign.” As Andy points out, this letter would absolutely be an unfair labor practice and the grounds for setting aside an election if it had come from any of the auto manufacturers. The letter starts by expressing “concern[] about the unionization campaign” and declaring that “[a]s Governors, we have a responsibility to . . . speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs.” The governors then explain that “companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs” and that “nionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy.” Following the textbook anti-union playbook, the governors assert that every time the UAW organizes a “foreign automaker” the plant goes out of business and they then conclude that “[p]utting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do.”

Union elections are designed to offer employees a choice on the question of whether to form a union and bargain collectively with their employer. But, as the Board put it recently, 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.” To ensure that employees in fact have a “free and untrammeled” choice on the union question, the Board sets rules for conduct in the pre-election campaign period, and it prohibits, among other acts, threats that unionization will lead to job loss – such threats are not only among the most common form of objectionable conduct, they are among the most powerful tool for undermining support for unionization.

Typically, when objectionable anti-union conduct occurs it is carried out by employers. But anti-union conduct carried out by third parties can also interfere with employees’ ability to make a free and untrammeled choice about unionization and the Board has thus held repeatedly that third-party conduct can be the basis of election objections. If sufficiently severe, moreover, if in the Board’s words the conduct “is so aggravated that it creates a general atmosphere of fear and reprisal rendering a free election impossible,” such third-party conduct can by itself require setting aside the results of an election.

FULL story at above.