Playing with a Full Deck

Card check and neutrality agreements can make the organizing process work for workers.

By Jimmie Turner

“If we don’t do something soon, we could be out of a job, or management will make life more miserable for us,” Ruth Hodges, RN, stood up and told her co-workers at Kaiser Permanente in Anaheim, Calif. “And we’ve been miserable in our department for too long.” Armed with a neutrality agreement, she volunteered to help 700 new members join the United Nurses Associations of California (UNAC).

Card check and neutrality agreements struck between unions and employers are clearing the roadblocks for workers who want to exercise their rights to unionize. Card check works because each side benefits: Employers agree not to threaten or intimidate workers and not to hire union busters to disrupt organizing campaigns; in turn, the union agrees not to disrupt operations at the worksite.

AFSCME councils and locals are coming to grips with the fact that organizing in the private sector is unfairly tilted against the workers. Managers have the right to bar non-employee organizers from the workplace. They can stall. And while they stall, they can — and do — instill the workplace with fear and conflict to scare the union supporters.

This isn’t to say that card check and neutrality agreements don’t have a place in the public sector. Many AFSCME bargaining units co-exist in the workplace with unrepresented groups and classifications, and there is a new trend among AFSCME’s employers to agree that non-union groups can join the union by demonstrating majority sentiment through card check.

Therefore, says Kris Rondeau, an organizer with Council 93/State Healthcare and Research Employees in Massachusetts, “If organizing is going to be your top priority, you can’t afford not to look at neutrality agreements and card checks as a viable option.”

‘BARGAINING TO ORGANIZE.’ To open job sites to organizing, AFSCME negotiating teams are sitting down at the bargaining table with employers to reach accords that make it easier for the unorganized, including workers under subcontracts, to unionize. Councils and locals that have formed successful labor/management partnerships with employers have translated the atmosphere of mutual respect into employer willingness to extend the relationship to other sites. The “bargaining to organize” strategy has three fundamental elements: card check, neutrality and accretion/area-wide clauses.

• A card-check agreement obliges an employer to recognize and bargain with the union when the union demonstrates through signatures on cards that it has the support of the majority of the workers. Card-check arrangements require the employer to provide the union with key contact information about employees, including names, home addresses, job titles and work locations.
• Neutrality precludes the employer from commenting negatively about an organizing drive and from hiring union busters. Neutrality agreements recognize that the decision to organize rests with workers, and employers should not be involved.
• Accretion/area-wide clauses provide that an employer agrees to add new sites and workers to pre-existing bargaining units and contracts. In area-wide arrangements, employers waive the right to force an election when they add facilities and agree to recognize the union at all future facilities in an area.

RESHUFFLE THE DECK. When 20 years of representing private health care workers still involve bumpy labor relations, it’s time to sit down with the employer and demand a neutrality agreement for subsequent organizing campaigns. That’s the lesson UNAC, an affiliate of the National Union of Hospital & Health Care Employees/ AFSCME, learned in dealing with Kaiser Permanente.

In 1995, AFSCME joined a coalition of unions to establish a neutrality agreement with Kaiser. Under the partnership, the company pledges to remain neutral on organizing and to recognize the union through card check. The coalition of unions agrees to help market Kaiser’s services to union households.

Organizers from UNAC seized the opportunity. In a matter of months, they accomplished what otherwise would have been a nearly impossible task.

Ruth Hodges, who’s been with Kaiser Permanente for 20 years, recalls times when organizers would hang up union signs in the workplace — even in bathroom stalls — only to have adversaries tear them down “within the hour.” Workers became increasingly fearful of organizing. When management agreed to neutrality, however, “people were coming out of the woodwork,” says the certified operating room RN. “They knew they had a lot of backing from the union and felt comfortable not being threatened for talking about the union.”

Sonia Moseley, UNAC executive vice president and director of organizing, says card checks are the ideal way to gain recognition in the private sector: “If a private company consents to neutrality, people can actually hear the truth from the unions. The company does not put out any negative propaganda, and those who really and truly want to join the union can actually make the decision to do so.”

GOING STATEWIDE. An arrangement made with Wexford Health Sources Inc. exemplifies the card-check process. After Illinois Council 31 organized workers from five Wexford sites, it was able to reach an agreement with management to recognize AFSCME at an additional five facilities through a card check. The company, which provides medical services in the state’s prisons, also agreed on a statewide unit; new facilities will fall automatically under AFSCME representation.

“It was pretty significant,” says Mike Newman, the council’s associate director. “We were able to bring in another seven or eight facilities much more quickly than we would have otherwise.”

Newman is convinced that the agreement simplifies the organizing process and saves time and valuable resources for other staff work. “Once we were able to convince Wexford of the strength of the union, the company agreed fairly quickly to this process,” he says.

GOING PUBLIC. Council 14 cashed in a few political chips with Hennepin (Minn.) County commissioners and worked out a card check and accretion agreement, opening the door to organizing professional workers in the medical center. The only stipulation: An election would be held for the first group of employees organized.

A unit comprised of social workers, librarians and chemical health counselors in the Hennepin County Medical Center, a public facility, voted 39 to 9 in favor of AFSCME in March. Any remaining professionals will be added to the bargaining unit through card-check recognition and accretion. Jeff Bains, an organizer with Council 14, says he anticipates adding pharmacists, medical technologists and occupational, physical and recreation therapists to the unit.

“It’s a piece of cake,” Bains says of organizing supported by card check. “When you have an election instead, it allows management or the anti-union co-workers to mount some kind of a campaign against the union.”

“I would have loved to have done this five years ago, but I knew my co-workers weren’t ready for that then,” says Brian McNeill, a social worker in the hospital who volunteered to talk to his fellow employees. He says workers finally voiced their displeasure against working conditions and voted for change. “I think people saw the writing on the wall and decided they needed to do something.”

Card checks can ease the anxieties of other professionals. “When I talk to the workers, I tell them, ‘It’s important to realize that you’re part of a labor movement,’” McNeill adds. “‘And in the long run, you really have nothing to lose.’”

LAX LAW. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) gives workers the right to organize and bargain for wages and benefits. But non-union employers have a habit of violating the law to delay, or even halt, union representation. Sometimes employers blatantly ignore the NLRA because penalties aren’t severe enough and administrative procedures are too slow. Any sanctions that are imposed come too little and too late.

The bosses hire union-busting firms that specialize in stopping organizing momentum. Sometimes, these firms advise management to deceive workers with promises of higher pay and better working conditions. Some employers inappropriately use public funds to pay the union busters. When that doesn’t work, the employers start intimidating and firing employees in an attempt to break the organizing campaign.

In addition, the NLRA permits employers to bar union employee organizers from the job site. Yet managers can stage captive-audience speeches while workers are on the clock, mail anti-union literature to their homes and convene one-on-one or small group meetings to defame the union.

LOUSY LOOPHOLES. Organizer Richard Bensinger is appalled that the NLRA can be applied so unfairly, especially since it’s intended to encourage collective bargaining. “But the relative power and access of the employer never allowed for a truly free choice,” he said, “and anti-union consultants and lawyers have further undermined the process by exploiting every loophole in the law.”

In Bensinger’s view, employers have made a mockery of it. “They routinely challenge the results of elections when the union wins, no matter what the margin of victory. The NLRB will spend months, even years, investigating minor and completely frivolous charges. By the time the company is ordered to bargain, many union supporters have quit or been fired, and new hires have been screened for union sympathy.”

Ironically, he notes, the United States has pushed for free and fair elections for workers’ organizing rights elsewhere. “The United States stands as a beacon of democracy for the world. It’s time to turn our sense of justice and fair play to the right to organize unions in our own country.”

FATE’S IN THE ‘CARDS.’ As card check and neutrality agreements gain a foothold in organizing, they will play a major role bringing the benefits of unionization to working households. Says Kris Rondeau, who helped organize 650 new members at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Hospital recently, “Without card checks and neutrality, organizing workers is very difficult in the private sector.

“The odds against unions are overwhelming. The employers own the workers. They can hide them and lock them away.”

She adds that for unions to achieve even greater success in organizing, they have to make an investment in time and be willing to innovate. For Rondeau, innovation definitely includes card check and neutrality: “They have to be a part of what we look at if we’re going to improve the organizing numbers.”