The System for Forming Unions is Broken

Today, CEOs get contracts that protect their wages and benefits. But some deny their employees the same opportunity. Although U.S. and international laws are supposed to protect workers' freedom to belong to unions, employers routinely harass, intimidate, coerce and even fire workers struggling to gain a union so they can bargain for better lives. And U.S. labor law is powerless to stop them. Employees are on an uneven playing field from the first moment they begin exploring whether they want to form a union, and the will of the majority often is crushed by brutal management tactics.

Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner studied hundreds of organizing campaigns and found that:

• Eighty-nine percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 64 percent interrogate workers about union activity; and 77 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
• Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
• Fifty-seven percent of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.
• In 34 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
• Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.

Learn More

• Get the facts in a one-page flier: Employer Interference—by the Numbers.
• Read the report: No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing, by Kate Bronfenbrenner.
• Download the AFL-CIO issue brief, "The Silent War: The Assault on Workers’ Freedom to Choose a Union and Bargain Collectively in the United States."
• Learn more about Voice@Work, the campaign to restore all workers’ freedom to form unions.
• Audio: Listen to AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and economist John Schmitt discuss the Employee Free Choice Act.

Majority Sign-Up

• Read the report: "Majority Authorizations and Union Organizing in the Public Sector: A Four-State Perspective."
• Why majority sign-up? What's wrong with "secret ballot elections"? 
• Robert Bruno: A study of majority sign-up in Illinois. 
• Out Front with John Sweeney: Management-Controlled Balloting.
• AFL-CIO Now blog: Here’s What NLRB "Elections" Really Mean.
• Elections—NLRB Style.

Organizations in Support of Employee Free Choice

• Read "The Employee Free Choice Act: A Human Rights Imperative" (2009), by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
• Read the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights report on the Employee Free Choice Act (PDF).
• Economic Policy Institute: "Questions and Answers on the Employee Free Choice Act."
• Center for Economic and Policy Research: "Dropping the Ax: Illegal Firings During Union Campaigns."
• Center for Economic and Policy Research: The Benefits of Unions.
• Center for American Progress Action Fund: How Not to Form a Union. (video)

More on Workplace Issues

• Report: "Impact of Republican-Appointed Judges: The Courts of Appeals’ Mistreatment of Union and Worker Success Before the NLRB."
• See what you can do if you’re punished for supporting a union.
• Fact Sheet: Workplace Coercion

American Rights at Work

Advocacy group American Rights at Work investigates workers' rights abuses, promotes public policy that protects workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively and sponsors reports on workers' rights issues. 

• The Anti-Union Network: Profiles of Union-Busters.
• Why Workers Want Majority Sign-Up.
• Workers' Rights Watch: Eye on the NLRB.
• Read the American Rights at Work study, "Secret Ballots Aren't Enough" (PDF).
• The Employee Free Choice Act: Good for Small Business.
• Read "Undermining the Right to Organize: Employer Behavior During Union Representation Campaigns," a disturbing study of employer interference (PDF).
• Read the latest "Labor Day List: Partnerships that Work" (2008), a report on successful partnerships between employers and their employees’ unions.
• More resources