For the first time in more than a decade, the rate at which unions won representation elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board decreased in 2007.   The rate of union wins declined to 60.1%, down from 61.4% in 2006, according to a report published by the Bureau of National Affairs on June 2.  In 2007, the number of elections won by unions was 902, as compared to 1,018 in 2006.

The number of representation elections held in 2007 also decreased from the prior year, continuing an annual decline begun in 1996.  That year, there were 3,300 agency elections, compared with 1,502 in 2007, a decrease of more than half.  According to the BNA report, unions have won more than half of all representation elections in each of the past 11 years.

The total number of new members organized by unions through NLRB elections was 57,908 employees in 2007, down from 59,759 of the previous year.  The number of eligible employees also decreased to 101,991 in 2007, from 112,336 in 2006.

The win rate for AFL-CIO affiliates in 2007, at 59.1%, bettered the 52.2% of the Change to Win federation.  Both union federations faltered from the previous year’s levels, although Change to Win unions lost more ground in terms of percentages than the AFL-CIO constituents.  Both federations’ affiliates were involved in fewer elections in 2007 than 2006. 

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters had the most elections in 2007, at 407, winning 48.6%, a half percentage decline from 2006.  In second place, the Service Employees International Union participated in 136 elections, winning 72.8%, marking a very slight gain over 2006.  The two industries with the highest percentage of election wins in 2007 (health care: 70%; services: 68.4%) are the two strongest constituencies for the SEIU. 

Labor’s Top-down Organizing Hope

Until now, one modest success in the otherwise long decline of organized labor as a dominant player in U.S. employment relations has been the steadily improving rate of union election wins.  With the most recent figures showing that, too, may have begun to falter, union leaders will seek other avenues to reverse the slide.      

Unions, by and large, have been holding their own through a method of organizing employees known as a corporate campaign, rather than elections. The primary objective of a union corporate campaign is to gain the advantage through the employer’s pledge of neutrality.  Corporate campaigns press the organizing message on a target employer’s financial partners, vendors, board members, shareholders, local communities, and other business relationships, and uses government agencies, the courts, and other external processes for added leverage.  If the employer bows to the pressure, it generally will give up its legal right to express freely its opposition to unionization to employees. 

The corporate campaign has proven very successful in organizing workforces that are union-free or already are partially organized.  It has worked at the organizing stage and at the bargaining table.  It is a key plank in the platform adopted by the SEIU at its international convention just concluded.  With a nearly unanimous commitment from its leadership, the SEIU has pledged the vast majority of its collective resources to gaining employer agreements of neutrality through industry-wide organizing targeting some of the largest employers in the country.  The Wall Street Journal reports Jackson Lewis Partner Michael Lotito as saying that more aggressive campaigns against big service-sector employers should be expected.

The SEIU and other unions are turning their attention and resources to the upcoming fall elections and a Democratically controlled Congress to advance their agenda for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.  If it becomes law, the Act would force employers to recognize a union on the basis of signed authorization cards alone, without an NLRB-supervised secret-ballot election, mandate arbitration for first union contracts where the parties could not reach a settlement within 90 days, and impose stronger penalties for employer violations of the National Labor Relations Act during organizing and bargaining.  Last year, EFCA was narrowly defeated in the U.S. Senate after passing the House of Representatives by a substantial margin. 

Organized labor has called for passage of the Act within the first 100 days of the new administration in Washington.