Anti-worker interest groups and lawmakers claim the so-called secret ballot used in the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process ensures fair and democratic elections, but the research tells a different story.

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American Rights at Work, Jan. 2011

While business groups uniformly oppose legislation to expand card check recognition of unions, investors react differently. According to a study conducted by Professors Steven Abraham, Adrienne E. Eaton and Paula B. Voos, stock prices fall relative to expected return in the contentious months leading up to NLRB representation votes, but rise when employers agree to base union recognition on voluntary card checks.

Their study compared stock performance in the 120 days leading up to voluntary card-check recognition of unions for 52 private corporations whose stock is publicly traded with market performance in the same period leading up to NLRB representation elections in 51 cases involving the same company and 228 cases involving the same union.

While stock prices performed an average of 10.6 percent better than would have been expected based on market models in the 52 card-check cases, share price dropped in the days leading up to the NLRB vote whether the company won or lost the representation vote. Stock prices performed an average of 5.8 percent worse in the 71 NLRB votes that the union won and 5.0 percent worse in the 203 elections that the company won.

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Steven Abraham, Adrienne E. Eaton, Paula B. Voos, Rutgers University, School of Management and Labor Relations, 2009

Understanding the importance of providing objective data to the national policy discussion about union conduct during card-check campaigns, four university labor programs studied the following four states: New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Oregon.

The results of the study unambiguously revealed that the majority sign-up provision was used extensively without hint of union or employer abuse:

New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Oregon have provided a mechanism for nearly 35,000 public sectors workers to express their interest in becoming union members. The process has worked without systematic or episodic employer or union abuse. While not identical, the states’ majority sign-up provisions are similar to the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act. As the debate over the national legislation continues, it is important for policymakers to have access to hard data detailing the impact of a majority sign-up provision. In the interest of constructing sound public policy, the states can make a valuable contribution to the pursuit of an informed judgment about labor law reform.

As is true in so many other policy areas, on the subject of union representation, the states are incubators for new ideas and practices. New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Oregon have demonstrated that a majority-authorization petition can genuinely determine the will of the employees to be unionized and provides a functional, largely non-adversarial and eventless process for insuring a fair work environment for everyone.

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Robert Bruno, University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations; A Joint Project of the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations; Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University; Extension Division, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University; University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center; May 2009

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.

» Full Report (PDF: 33 pages, 366kb)
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» Summary

Kate Bronfenbrenner, Ph.D., American Rights at Work Education Fund and Economic Policy Institute, May 2009  

Neither Free Nor Fair: The Subversion of Democracy Under NLRB Elections contrasts what NLRB elections look like in the real world with what happens in elections for public office. It addresses head-on the claim that the NLRB election process guarantees workers a truly secret ballot - the central claim of anti-union advocates who seek to keep the current NLRB system in place. Lafer's work shows instead that NLRB elections fail to safeguard workers' right to keep their opinions private; and that, on the contrary, the NLRB system results in workers being forced to reveal their political preferences long before they step into the voting booth - thus turning the "secret ballot" into a mockery of democratic process.

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» Executive Summary
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By Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., American Rights at Work, July 2007 

Findings from this survey of workers’ opinions on union and employer coercion during card check campaigns and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections reveal that claims of union pressure in card check campaigns are grossly exaggerated.

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Adrienne Eaton, Ph.D. of Rutgers University, and Jill Kriesky, Ph.D. of Wheeling Jesuit University, March 2006