Labor & Employment Law

Senate Republicans Fail to End Majority Rule in Union Elections

By Mike Hall

Senate Republicans today lost their bid to block new democratic election procedures for workers in the aviation and rail industries who want to form unions and bargaining collectively.

Earlier this year, the National Mediation Board (NMB) issued a rule that says air and rail union elections must be decided by a majority of votes cast. In June, a federal court upheld it. A resolution (S.J. Res. 30) to overturn the new rule failed 43-56.

Previously under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which covers rail and airline workers, each worker who did not cast a vote in a representation election was automatically counted as a ?No? vote.

But Senate Republicans?who are elected by a majority of voters who cast ballots in their states?said workers should be denied those same basic democratic rights and introduced the resolution.

In a letter to the Senate urging defeat of the resolution, AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director William Samuel says the same ?undemocratic procedures? that Republicans want to impose on air and rail workers, ?would never be tolerated in our civic elections.?

For too long, the deck has been stacked against workers who simply want to exercise their basic right to decide whether or not to be represented by a union.

Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD), also points out the rule ?is the same procedure that we use to elect senators, members of Congress and is found throughout our democratic society.?

There are, of course, several reasons why a person may not vote in an election, and it makes no sense to automatically and arbitrarily assign a “no” vote to all non-voters.  As a result, the old process was structurally tilted against those workers seeking representation.

He also dismantles several other Republican claims about the way the new rule was adopted.  Click here for his full letter to the Senate.

In a statement of policy issued this morning, the Obama administration said the resolution ?would undermine a fundamental principle of fairness? in union elections and warned of a veto if the resolution had been approved by the Senate and then the House.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 23, 2010 (boomark / email).