Monday, May 18, 2020

This would be depressing if the world weren't already so depressing

I just had my online training for the changes to the NLRB's union election rules. Not surprisingly (considering this is the Trump Administration's overhaul of the election rules), it was incredibly depressing if you think unionization is a good thing. The entire system now (or at least when they go into effect after this month) is to delay union elections as long as possible, giving the employer even more chance to use its disproportionate power to erode support for the union.

On the other hand when the Obama administration overhauled the election rules in 2014, the employer bar screamed bloody murder. They referred to the rules as "snap election rules" because of the changes that were made to cut off avenues that employer's used to stall. To the surprise of everyone (myself included), 2 years later when I went to a seminar reviewing the NLRB statistics, they did not show any change in the rate of unionization. Unions won the same percentage of elections in the pre-Obama rules as they did in under the "snap election" regime. So I guess it is possible that the Trump "stall election" rules won't actually make any practical difference. I guess we might find out in 2022. (Unless the court challenges stop the new election rules before they go into effect succeed, which is unlikely but possible.)

Lookit that! An ultra-rare work related post. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.