Shifting Strategies

In January 2006, UNITE HERE president Bruce Raynor reported that 90 percent of the new members his union obtained over the previous year had been gathered through “alternative means” that avoided elections supervised by the government. The AFL-CIO’s organizing director told The Wall Street Journal in August 2005 that at least three times as many workers were unionized through the “card check” method as through traditional secret ballot elections in 2004.

To listen to union officials, it would seem that they are unable to organize new members through NLRB elections. As United Food and Commercial Workers president Joe Hansen explained in a 2006 interview with the Bureau of National Affairs, union officials are turning away from traditional elections because “we can’t win that way anymore.”

But statistics from the NLRB show that in its fiscal year 2005, 94 percent of representation elections were conducted within 56 days, with unions winning 61 percent of certification elections. And while the number of representation elections (including certification and decertification attempts) decreased by 19 percent between 1996 and 2005, the number of elections resulting in union certification actually increased by 2 percent.

Few would complain about winning six of 10 fair elections or increasing the number of elections resulting in certifications, but union organizers aren’t looking for fair elections. They want big numbers. And they want them now.