Byron Austin has been fielding plenty of questions about the Employee Free Choice Act — and getting a “very encouraging” level of interest from people interested in organizing.
Austin, who wouldn’t provide specifics, heads up Local 235 of the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents workers in the printing and graphic arts industry, including commercial printers, specialty printers, corrugated box manufacturers and envelope-makers.
He listed organizing efforts in Liberty, Clinton and Blue Springs in the past five years that had strong initial support from workers but fizzled under current rules. Operating under rules proposed in the EFCA would have created a much different labor picture in the Midwest.
“I’m a strong believer in the labor movement,” said Austin, who got involved in 1966 and has been a full-time union officer for 22 years. “This EFCA is long, long overdue.”
The legislation, now before Congress, would allow union certification if a majority of employees in a workplace sign up, speed the negotiation of first contracts with the threat of binding arbitration and stiffen penalties for employers that exceed limits in resisting organization.
Printing is just one local industry that could see a jump in efforts to organize should Congress pass the EFCA. Other likely candidates include the service and entertainment sectors, health care, manufacturing and even emerging green industries.
Bridgette Williams, president of the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO, said hotel workers probably would try to organize if the act were passed. The area’s one union hotel — Argosy Casino Hotel & Spa in Riverside — was the site for a state AFL-CIO convention in September, but it doesn’t have the capacity for larger regional, national and international events, Williams said.
“There are no union hotels in Kansas City, which is a significant revenue loss to this area,” she said.
Several organization campaigns in the health care sector have been thwarted but would make significant gains under the EFCA, she said.
Robyn Hoffman, a senior nurse at Centerpoint Medical Center in Independence, said the EFCA could have provided just the antidote to drawn-out efforts to negotiate a contract. In November 2007, nurses voted 167-103, with 66 abstaining, to join Nurses United Local 5126, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. Ongoing efforts to get a contract have lasted nearly a year and a half; on April 23-24, nurses were scheduled to vote on whether to decertify the union.
Hoffman, a member of the negotiating team, estimated that she’s put 1,000 volunteer hours into the effort in the past year and a half.
“If the EFCA had been in place, we’d already have a contract,” she said. “Instead, we’re facing all this stress.”
The legislation would help future organizers, she said. And if the nurses’ effort at Centerpoint survives the decertification vote, it could help them get their first contract.
Dealers at Argosy attempted to organize more than a year ago. About 65 percent had approved organization in the signup; the effort lost 118-68 at an election nearly two months later, said Rick Klingenberg, who worked with the dealers.
“Organizing right now in Kansas City is pretty rough,” said Klingenberg, vice president of United Auto Workers Local 710.
Industries that have been successful at resisting unionization would be likely targets if the EFCA passed, said Donna Ginther, director of the Center for Economic & Business Analysis at the University of Kansas. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. ranks at the top of that list, she said. Efforts also probably would spread to construction jobs, many of which are filled by immigrants who have been hesitant to vocally support a union.
Judy Ancel, director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies, added the finance and banking industry, insurance companies and Sprint Nextel Corp. to the list of potential organizing targets.
However, Ginther said, the economy could mute the effect of organization efforts.
“This is a really terrible time to think about unions,” Ginther said. “The economy is so soft right now that I don’t think employees are thinking about getting concessions from an employer — I think they’re thinking about whether they’re going to keep their jobs.”
And as the globalization and deregulation of the past quarter-century have weighed on U.S. companies’ profits, union formation has shifted to the public sector, she said. As of 2006, union members made up 7.4 percent of the private-sector work force and 36 percent in the public sector.
Ancel disagreed that the economy would harm organization efforts.
“In the 1930s, when the economy was far worse, workers began organizing because they simply couldn’t survive,” she said.
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