John Jordan Oped on Kerry and Labor

WASHINGTON

THE ELECTION of John Kerry as U.S. president is organized labor’s last chance to change the conditions that would let labor grow again. And labor knows it.

Labor leaders are spending an unprecedented amount of members’ dues to elect John Kerry. The reasons for labor’s sense of urgency and willingness to invest huge sums of money are rooted in long-standing trends, both here and abroad.

The American labor movement has been in decline for at least 25 years. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney came to power nearly a decade ago with bold plans to organize new members. But new leadership and strategies have failed to arrest labor’s decline.

In 1993, the percentage of the workforce represented by unions declined yet again, to 12.9 percent. American unions have not represented such a small percentage of workers since the 1920s. Boom or bust, the American labor movement shrinks.

There are a number of reasons for the American labor movement’s decline, including government and employer hostility; the declining role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy; deregulation; global economic integration; and labor’s own failure to connect with a generation that knows virtually nothing about unions.

And union decline is not confined to the United States. The share of the workforce represented by unions has fallen in nearly every industrialized country.

Against this universal backdrop of declining union power, why does the American labor movement think it has a shot at reversing its fortunes?

Three words: card-check recognition.

Since the 1930s, the main method used by unions to recruit workers has been secret-ballot elections, overseen and certified by the National Labor Relations Board. If a union can persuade 50 percent of a work site’s employees plus 1 to vote for it, the union becomes the exclusive representative for all the employees.

From labor’s perspective, the problem with this process is that it gives the employer an opportunity to use often heavy-handed and even illegal tactics to persuade workers to reject union representation. Such abuses are well documented. As a result, unions generally win fewer than half of all secret-ballot elections.

One solution to this problem is card-check recognition. In this process, a union obtains an employer’s agreement to recognize the union as the employees’ bargaining agent if the union provides evidence that a majority of the employees want to be represented by the union. Evidence usually consists of employee signatures on union-authorization cards or petitions. If the signatures “check out,” the union is recognized.

Unions do quite well in winning recognition and gaining new members if they can persuade employers to agree to card-check recognition. Whereas last year labor organized 74,000 new members through secret-ballot elections, it organized 200,000 through card-check recognition.

Not surprisingly, the “if they can persuade employers” in this process is everything for the unions. Employers are under no legal obligation to agree to card-check recognition. To persuade them to agree to it can require a union to mount a large organizing effort. It would be preferable for unions if the law mandated that employers had to participate in card-check recognition.

Many labor leaders view some form of card-check recognition as necessary if they ever hope to recruit more members. They believe that it is their last, best chance to arrest and eventually reverse their decades-long decline.

That is where this year’s presidential election comes in. The Employee Free Choice Act, introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D.-Calif.), has quietly gathered over 200 co-sponsors in the U.S. House. It is conceivable that labor and its allies could produce enough votes for this card-check-recognition bill to squeak through both the House and Senate.

George Bush would veto the Employee Free Choice Act. President Kerry would sign it into law.

The bill helps explain why organized labor has invested unprecedented resources to elect John Kerry. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents janitors, health-care workers, and others in the service sector, has committed $60 million to the effort – a larger investment than even that of the AFL-CIO.

The SEIU is one of America’s only growing unions, and it has grown primarily through the creative use of card-check recognition.

Labor’s huge spending on this presidential election represents an extraordinary roll of the dice on changing the political map to jump-start union growth. Will it work? Will Kerry beat Bush? Will labor gather enough votes in Congress to send a card-check-recognition law to the White House for signature?

Most important, will card-check recognition lead to significant gains in union membership?

The answers are unclear. What is clear is organized labor’s conclusion that card-check recognition is the key to labor’s renewal as a significant player in America’s economic life. What is also clear is that labor believes that a John Kerry presidency would turn that key to open the door to a better future.

A great many organizations and individuals have invested their hopes in a John Kerry presidency. Few believe they have more riding on Tuesday’s election than what remains of America’s once-great labor movement.

John Jordan, president of Principor Communications, was for 10 years a labor strategist and organizer.

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© 2004 Principor Communications