From SCDigest's On-Target E-Magazine
- Jan. 7, 2015 -
Supply Chain News: As Expected, NLRB Approves Microwave Elections, Makes Other Rule Changes that Favor Unionization Efforts
Most Significant Change to US Labor Law in Decades, as Business Groups Mount Legal Challenge in Federal Court
SCDigest Editorial Staff
A more than three-year long battle at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ended in December as it has appeared obvious it would since early in 2014, with the NLRB voting to enable much faster "microwave" or "ambush" elections and several other changes most sees as favorable to unionization efforts that many say are the most significant changes to labor law in decades.
The vote was 3 to 2, with the three Democratic NLRB members voting to approve the rules, and the Republicans voting against.
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Labor experts say the new rules could allow elections in practice in as little as 25 days from the call for a vote, and perhaps as short as just 14 days, versus the average of 38 days currently for non-contested votes and 59 for contested elections. |
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The regulation will eliminate a previously-required 25-day period between the time an election is ordered and the election itself, and it will require employers to furnish union organizers with all available personal email addresses and phone numbers of workers eligible to vote in a union election. An NLRB decision handed down around the same time in December essentially prohibits employers from denying union organizers access to company email. The rule will also, for the first time, allow for the electronic filing and transmission of union election petitions.
Perhaps most significantly in the end, the new rules will also require appeals related to elections to be consolidated into a single process, and in most cases employers appealing a pre-election decision by an NLRB regional director will have to wait until after the election takes place before they file a request for review. Currently, appeals by employers delay the vote until they are ruled upon by the NLRB, which can stretch the time between a call for election and the actual vote by weeks or months.
Most experts believe that delays in the process favor employers, as it gives companies more time to argue to employees why they should not approve a union, and the union loses some momentum it has gained from forcing a vote or organization. Labor experts say the new rules could allow elections in practice in as little as 25 days from the call for a vote, and perhaps as short as just 14 days, versus the average of 38 days currently for non-contested votes and 59 for contested elections.
Post-election reviews of issues by the board will now also be discretionary rather than mandatory.
Leading business groups were not happy with the approval of the new rules, and as expected this week combined to file suit to block their implementation. The five plaintiffs in the suit are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Retail Federation, and the Society for Human Resource Management. The suit claims that the new rules violate federal law, in part by curtailing an employer's right to communicate with employees.
(Manufacturing Article Continued Below)
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The rules "impermissibly curtail" an employer's right to communicate with employees by "substantially shortening" the period between an election petition and the election itself, calling it a violation of the First Amendment, the suit alleges