By Union organizing campaigns have been in the news a great deal lately. Graduate students at Yale University voted this week in favor of unionizing. But Boeing workers at its South Carolina factory recently rejected representation by the International Association of Machinists, after a long and bitter organizing campaign. What makes the difference between a “yes” or “no” vote? The key lies in understanding current organizing tactics and preparing a timely, effective response.
Boeing Defeats Union Vote In South Carolina
According to news reports, 74 percent of over 2,800 workers at Boeing’s South Carolina factory voted against the union. The election was significant because it is believed that Boeing opened its Dreamliner assembly line in South Carolina at least in part to escape the strong union that represents Boeing’s workforce in its home state of Washington. South Carolina is one of the least unionized states in the country and Boeing mounted a strong opposition to the union campaign there.
Boeing’s South Carolina production and maintenance workers sought more consistent work instructions, fairer evaluations, and higher wages and benefits, according to news reports. In opposition, Boeing is described as emphasizing that the union had earlier opposed expansion of the South Carolina factory and that the union would only come between workers and management. Reports also describe a series of edgy opposition ads ran by a group closely tied to the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, to which Boeing belongs, including one that showed a machinist as a casino boss who pushed workers to gamble away their future. The strong opposition campaign appears to played a significant role in the rejection of the union in the recent vote.
Yale University Grad Assistants Favor Union
In 2016, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate student employees, such as teaching and research assistants, on private campuses are entitled to form a union and collectively bargain. (See our post on that ruling here.) That ruling overturned long-standing Board precedent against treating graduate assistants as employees who are entitled to the rights and protections of the National Labor Relations Act. In the short time since last summer’s ruling, at least three campuses have seen graduate students form unions, with Yale University as the latest.
News reports cite numerous motivations behind the teaching assistant’s push for a union, including funding security, mental health care, affordable child care, and equitable pay. Yale, which had expressed its opposition to the 2016 NLRB ruling, warned graduate students that a union could alter their relationship with faculty members and limit their individual power as the union made decisions for everyone. The union’s margin of victory in this week’s election was reported to be slim.
Union organizers took a unique approach at Yale, seeking to have individual departments hold separate elections for their respective grad assistants. This tactic of using micro-units has proven successful in other organizing campaigns as the union need only convince a smaller number of employees in a particular department to vote “yes” rather than getting a majority of all employees holding the same position companywide to vote in favor of the union. In Yale’s case, the union Unite Here was successful in getting the graduate assistants in eight of nine departments to vote in favor of joining the union.
Understanding Union Organizing Tactics
The fast pace of union elections under the “quickie election” rules can significantly favor union organizers. As we’ve written in a prior post, the NLRB’s new election process, in effect since April 2015, accelerates the election process by shortening the time between a union’s filing of a representation petition and the holding of the vote. That time may be as short as two weeks, leaving management little time to ramp up an opposition campaign. Unions can seek to catch employers off guard or unprepared, using the quick election process to win elections without an organized response from management. Read more