Public Sector Unions and Lessons as yet Unlearned
Daniel Howes asked an excellent question in the Detroit News yesterday: What will it take for public-sector labor — with no ties to private, for-profit employers — to understand that the steady gravy train of the past 50 years has ground to a halt? In autos and steel, the UAW and the Steelworkers finally learned brutal [more...]

Posted Fri, 19 Mar 2010 .

Accepting the inevitable, AFL-CIO will back health care bill
Richard Trumka’s one block sprint to the White House yesterday afternoon paid off. This just in, from Politico: “A union official says the nation’s largest labor federation is strongly endorsing the Obama administration’s health care overhaul bill and plans to push wavering lawmakers for support. A union official familiar with the proceedings says [more...]

Posted Thu, 18 Mar 2010 .

Poor Elections Record

Freedom of choice is a matter at the very center of our national labor relations policy, and a secret election is the preferred method of gauging choice.

— Avecor v. NLRB, D.C. Circuit, 1991

Bruce Raynor, president of the union UNITE HERE, explains: "There's no reason to subject the workers to an election." One SEIU local leader has flatly admitted to the Wall Street Journal, "We don't do elections." And no wonder. Even though unions have ultimate control over if and when certification elections are held, they still lose four in ten elections they call. And employees have chosen no representation at all in more than 2,000 certification and decertification elections over a two-year period.

According to the National Labor Relations Board 's annual report figures for cases closed in 2003 and 2004 (covering all NLRB-overseen certification and decertification elections):

All Representation Elections	2004	2005
Overall Union win (%)	53.2 %	56.8 %
AFL-CIO Win (%)	50.8 %	53.8 %
Elections in which no union was chosen	1,272	1,145

In the first half of the government's Fiscal Year 2005:

Unions organized about 24 percent fewer workers through elections than in the same period in the previous year.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organized half as many workers through elections as it did in the first half of 2004.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) won only 43 percent of the elections it held.

Source: Bureau of National Affairs, Dec. 9, 2005