Five years in, still no flood of unionization through card check
Oregon is one of at
least six states with
a public-sector
card check law
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
It took three legislative sessions for
the Oregon AFL-CIO to win passage of
a state law giving state and local gov-
ernment workers the right to unionize
by “card check,” but results since then
suggest it’s been beneficial but not
game-changing. Just 2,487 workers
have unionized through card check so
far, and three quarters of those were in
a single unit — the 1,912 University of
Oregon faculty who joined American
Federation of Teachers (AFT) in March
2012. Take that unit out, and that leaves
575 workers (at 31 workplaces) who
have unionized through card check in
the five years since the law took effect.
Card check was the best-known fea-
ture of the now-mothballed Employee
Free Choice Act, a private-sector labor
law reform bill that came within a few
votes of overcoming a U.S. Senate fili-
buster in 2009. Business groups cam-
paigned furiously against card check,
pleading that it deprived workers of the
benefits of a “secret ballot” union elec-
tion. Under the card check method of
unionizing, also known as “majority
sign-up,” an employer recognizes a
union once a majority of workers sign
authorization cards declaring that they
want one. Current U.S. law says private
sector employers may recognize a
union via card check, but they don’t
have to. In other words, it’s the em-
ployer’s choice. Most employers prefer
the election method, because it gives
them on average six weeks to hire
union avoidance consultants and mount
an anti-union campaign in the work-
place, where they have every advantage
of controlled access to employees.
Unions tend to favor the card check
method because it avoids that lopsided
electoral playing field.
The dynamics may be different in
public sector union elections, because
employers may have less incentive to
oppose unionization. Still, Oregon’s
HB 2891 was heralded by the Oregon
AFL-CIO as the year’s top legislative
achievement when it passed in 2007. It
was meant to do for local public sector
workers what the Employee Free
Choice Act tried to do for private sector
workers — make it easier to unionize.
Union organizers say there’s no
denying that card check is an easier
method of unionizing, but they point to
several factors preventing a flood of
new union members. Most of Oregon’s
large public sector workplaces are
unionized already: Nearly every K-12
teacher in the state is already repre-
sented by the Oregon Education Asso-
ciation, and among state employees,
only a few thousand union-eligible
workers remain nonunion, compared to
at least 43,000 who are union-repre-
sented. Also, some groups of non-union
workers are similar enough to workers
in existing unionized units that they join
Report puts Oregon living wage at $15.84 an hour
A new study finds that a livable wage
in Oregon is now $15.84 an hour for a
single adult. The pay scale is based on
an assessment of what is needed to meet
basic needs such as food, shelter, trans-
portation, health care, and savings of 10
percent for emergency funds. The liv-
able wage rate in Washington is said to
be $16.13 an hour.
“Broken Bootstraps: Falling Behind
on Full Time Work,” is the 14th annual
MARCH 15, 2013
report put out by the Alliance for a Just
Society (formerly the Northwest Fed-
eration of Community Organizations),
a national coalition of grassroots social
justice community organizations.
The 2012 Job Gap Report finds that
54 percent of job openings pay less
than $15.84 an hour. The report also
found that for each job opening that
pays at least $15.84 an hour, there are
11 job seekers on average.
“Pulling yourself up by the boot-
straps: The concept is an American
ideal, a well-established part of our
folklore, an idiom that has embedded
itself into our country’s lexicon. But, in
reality, we find there is a more accurate
way to describe it: A fairy tale,” wrote
the report’s authors, Ben Henry and
Allyson Fredericksen.
For a full copy of the report, go to
www.allianceforajustsociety.org.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
through a different process — unit clar-
ification — which the state Employ-
ment Relations Board has ruled they
must do through an election.
Labor union organizers also say
Oregon’s card check law has advan-
tages and disadvantages. Oregon AFL-
CIO organizing specialist Chris Hewitt
says the traditional election has one ad-
vantage: It requires that pro-union
workers get active, forming a commit-
tee and campaigning for weeks or
months. With card check, some work-
ers may feel they’ve done all they need
to do once they sign the card. Oregon’s
card check law also creates a com-
pressed time frame: Once the first card
is signed, organizers have 90 days to
sign up a majority. The election route
allows a union campaign to grow at a
more flexible pace.
On the other hand, says AFT presi-
dent David Rives, with the card check
method, a union campaign is more
likely to be conducted through one-on-
one personal visits. And with card
check, the union demonstrates support
from an outright majority of the work-
place, not just a majority of those vot-
ing.
Does card check make a difference,
or does it just make it easier? Richard
Schwarz, AFT-Oregon’s recently re-
tired executive director, says he thinks
the UO faculty group would have
unionized anyway, without card check.
On the other hand, card check might
make a difference in cases where an
employer wages an anti-union cam-
paign. State employees already had a
version of card check prior to the law’s
passage, under an executive order of
Gov. Ted Kulongoski. Service Employ-
ees International Union (SEIU) Local
503 campaigned at the Oregon Lottery
under those rules in 2006, and at one
point, 156 of 303 eligible workers had
signed union cards. But before they
were counted, at least seven workers
changed their minds and asked for their
cards back. Then 133 workers signed
an informal petition calling for a union
election; an election was held, and the
union lost 127 to 165.
Local 503 Executive Director
Heather Conroy says the Oregon Lot-
tery would have become union if the
card check law had been in effect.
Kulongoski’s executive order didn’t
bind the state court system. In a 2004
campaign by Local 503 among 1,348
court employees, the vote was 468 to
547; the union also lost an earlier at-
tempt by 17 votes in 1995. If state court
employees had had card check, it’s pos-
sible they would have gone union. But
they haven’t in the five years since the
law gave them that right.
Five other states besides Oregon
have public sector card check laws: Illi-
nois, New Hampshire, New York, Mas-
sachusetts, and New Jersey.
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