WASHINGTON - Former National Labor Relations Board chairman and Stanford law Professor William Gould said Monday that the biggest changes to labor law since 1935 are within reach if provisions that have inflamed employers, particularly the elimination of secret balloting in union organizing, are modified, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Addressing labor relations agencies in Oakland, Gould suggested using mail-in ballots instead of the proposed card check rule, which would force employers to recognize a union if more than half the workers sign a card saying they approve.
Gould, who led the labor agency in the Clinton administration, said the debate has "gone off course" over card check. Under the plan, secret ballots would be available, but employers say they would not be used because union organizers could intimidate workers into signing cards.
The Employee Free Choice Act, a priority of unions and their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill and in the White House, has been bogged down in an intensely emotional fight between unions and employers over secret ballots and mandatory arbitration that would force employers fighting union organization to submit to a third-party mediator.
Both provisions have enraged employers, who say they would unfairly aid unions and violate a sacred right to secret-ballot elections.
Unions argue that the rules would restore balance to a system that over decades has given unfair advantage to employers to delay elections and bully workers.
Conservative Democrats have balked, forcing the party to consider dropping card check.
Gould said a few fixes could make the bill work better for everyone. The main problem with the system, he said, is the delays employers use to block unions. Card check would not solve that problem, he said, because employers could continue to mount challenges. He added that Canada has largely restored secret-ballot elections after its experiment with card check.
On mandatory arbitration, Gould suggested borrowing a technique from Major League Baseball that forces the arbiter to choose one offer or the other; the uncertainty can force both sides to negotiate harder. Extending the deadline to arbitration as some suggest as a compromise is "misguided," he said.
Unionization has dropped steadily since its peak in 1955 at 35 percent of the private-sector labor force to 7 percent now.
Gould cautioned that it is an "urban myth" that labor law alone can "restore the middle class."
Other factors, he said, include globalization; imports from low-wage countries that "decimated union-organized manufacturing;" the rise of undocumented workers and part-time work; the growth in services and "union lethargy."
Still, he said a revised law could have "a considerable impact on the workplace."
(This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle July 21, 2009.)
