A landmark study examining workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain shows that the problems the Employee Free Choice Act would address are not only getting worse, but are severely impairing workers' chances at getting ahead.
“No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” authored by Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations, documents a disturbing increase in corporate tactics to interfere with, block and delay workers’ attempts to form unions. Workers who want to form a union all too frequently are subject to harassment, mandatory meetings, threats and even illegal firings.
The study, released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the American Rights at Work Education Fund, updates earlier studies by Bronfenbrenner. “No Holds Barred” examines more than 1,000 union representation campaigns over four years and finds that “intense and aggressive” tactics to block workers’ freedom to form unions are becoming more commonplace.
Brofenbrenner writes that these coercive tactics have a chilling effect on workers, which means they’re not able to exercise their basic freedom to form a union and bargain for a better life:
Our findings suggest that the aspirations for representation are being thwarted by a coercive and punitive climate for organizing that goes unrestrained due to a fundamentally flawed regulatory regime that neither protects their rights nor provides any disincentives for employers to continue disregarding the law. Moreover, many of the employer tactics that create a punitive and coercive atmosphere are, in fact, legal.