CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

12. UNION-MANAGEMENT CONFLICT: HISTORICAL TRENDS AND NEW DIRECTIONS 361
New Trends and Alternatives
Card Check. Traditional organizing in the United States requires at least
30% of employees in a bargaining unit to sign cards saying that they are
interested in a union before the NLRB will call for an election. A period
of campaigning by each side follows the presentation of the cards to the
NLRB, which supervises a vote at the end of this period. If over 50% of the
workers vote “yes,” then the union is certified as the exclusive representative
of the workforce, and management is required to bargain with the
union in good faith (Gold, 1998).
An alternative to this process, favored by unions, is a “card check” procedure
in which employers agree to recognize the union if over 50% of the
employees sign a card saying they want a union. Card check agreements
avoid the often acrimonious recognition campaign. This idea is attractive
to some companies, especially in service industries like hotels because the
period of open campaigning can lead to very tense employee relations.
Even if the union is defeated, the open campaigning of a traditional election
may cost the company dearly in bad service to customers and bad employee
relations. Some countries have legislation that allows recognition of unions
based solely on card check without management agreement. The United
Kingdom, for example, introduced a card check system in 2000. Some provinces
of Canada, similarly, recognize unions based on card check (though it
should be noted that several provinces have actually eliminated card check
in favor of mandatory voting in the past three decades; Johnson, 2002).
The card check system works in favor of union recognition. In the
United States, Eaton and Kriesky (2001) examined organizing experiences
under 118 separate written agreements that include a neutrality agreement
or card check provision. They found that card check agreements
reduced management campaigning, as well as the use of illegal tactics
such as illegal discharge of employees and illegal promises of benefits,
and substantially increased the union recognition rate. Neutrality alone
apparently had much less effect. Johnson (2002) found, in a study of nine
Canadian jurisdictions, that mandatory votes reduce certification success
rates by approximately 9% below what they would have been under card
check. Riddell (2004) found that when British Columbia switched from
a card check to a mandatory vote system in 1984, union success rates
declined by an average of 19% during the voting regime. When the law
changed again in 1993, back to a card check system, the union success rate
returned to its original level.
Prerecognition Negotiation. Estreicher (1993) argued that allowing labor
and management to negotiate before a union is recognized could offer
benefits to both sides. In U.S. labor law, management may not control or
guide the process by which workers select a union—that could lead to
“company dominated” unions. Estreicher suggested, however, that antiunion
campaigning by management stems in part from fears that a union