New findings from Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner provide a comprehensive, independent analysis of employer behavior in union representation elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Her research identifies the range and incidence of legal and illegal coercive tactics used by employers NLRB elections and the ineffectiveness of current labor law to protect and enforce workers’ rights during the process.

Dr. Bronfenbrenner’s report also compares employer behavior in this study’s period to previous studies that she and her research teams have conducted over the last 20 years.

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Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, employing almost half of the American workforce. Yet, labor law is not ensuring a level playing field for responsible businesses, large and small.  Businesses that comply with the law face unfair competition from companies who refuse to respect the rights of their employees to join unions. The Employee Free Choice Act will give back to small businesses the freedom to compete based on innovation and quality instead of who can afford the most expensive anti-union consultants.

Small and large businesses across the nation who have respected their employees’ choice to form a union have reported that the sky did not fall – far from it.  In fact, one report found that a higher percentage of unionized workers in a state significantly reduced the probability of small business failures.  More generally, a large body of research demonstrates that firms that become unionized are no more likely to fail than comparable firms that remain non-union. 

Increased union membership rates will help small businesses by boosting consumer spending, increasing access to training resources, and reducing healthcare costs through plans that pool many unionized workers and small businesses together.

How American Labor Law Denies a Quarter of the Workforce Collective Bargaining Rights

The right to organize and bargain collectively under the protection of law is the bedrock upon which workers are able to form or join a labor union. American labor law has not kept pace with the changing nature and face of the modern workplace and increasingly excludes more and more workers from this legal protection. Increasing numbers of employees have a supervisory aspect or capacity of their work. More and more immigrants join the workforce, especially in the agricultural sector, and more people have been classified as independent contractors, whether by choice or by an employer’s decision. As these changes take place, American labor law denies these workers their legally-protected right to form unions and collectively bargain by either defining workers as not employees or by expressly excluding them.

This report provides an accurate, up-to-date analysis of the number and type of workers without collective bargaining rights, as well as recent trends in the workforce and legal rulings that have impacted that number. There are 140.5 million people in the civilian workforce. Our research found that of these employees, 33.5 million, or 23.8%, have no rights under the NLRA or any other labor law: no legally-protected right to join or form a union, no legally-protected right to bargain collectively for their wages and conditions of work, and therefore, effectively no freedom of association in the workplace.

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Employers have little reason to abide by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), as the financial disincentives of violating the law are minimal. From firing, demoting, or retaliating against workers for their support of a union to ignoring their duty to negotiate a contract, many employers blatantly violate the NLRA. Other major federal employment laws impose fines or damages on employers who break the law. Yet the NLRA’s nominal deterrents do little to prevent employer lawlessness compared to the costs of violating minimum wage, discrimination, and health and safety protections. 

If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act will address the insufficient law by increasing penalties on those who break the law and giving workers the just compensation they deserve.

It is well-established that employers illegally fire workers for their support of a union in the United States. But what people may not realize is that for every worker fired, 395 coworkers receive the message: get involved with the union and you’ll get a pink slip.

Looking at how many workers, on average, in a workplace observe someone being fired for supporting a union reveals the real impact. The firing goes far beyond a lost job, vanished income, and workplace injustice for the individual worker—it can chill support for a union by instilling fear among coworkers that they too could lose their livelihood and economic well-being.