Representatives of Their Own Choosing?: Certification, Elections, and Employer Free Speech, 1935-1959

Representatives of Their Own Choosing?: Certification, Elections, and Employer Free Speech, 1935-1959 John Logan* The skilled practitioner, from the very first union leaflet or rumor of organization, knows that every move that is made by or on the behalf of the employer must lead inexorably to the right and opportunity to electioneer.' The certification election remains by and large the ultimate moment of truth in relation to the ability of unions to build membership. 2 Trade unions' recent declining success rate in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, or Board) elections has contributed significantly to the fall in private sector union membership in the United States.3 In the late 1930s, unions won over eighty percent of NLRB elections, but union victory rates have fallen continuously since the mid-1940s, dropping to sixty-three percent by the late 1950s.' By the mid-1970s, union victory rates had fallen below fifty percent, and by * Lecturer, London School of Economics 1. I. HERBERT ROTHENBERG & STEVEN B. SILVERMAN, LABOR UNIONS: How TO: AVERT THEM, BEAT THEM, OUT-NEGOTIATE THEM, LIVE WITH THEM, AND UNLOAD THEM 210 (1973). 2. JOHN J. LAWLER, UNIONIZATION AND DEUNIONIZATION: STRATEGY, TACTICS, AND OUTCOMES 137 (1990). 3. See Marcus H. Sandver & Herbert G. Heneman III, Union Growth Through the Election Process, 20 INDUS. REL. 109 n.1 (1981). Employer antiunion campaigns have played a critical role in unions' declining success in NLRB elections. See William T. Dickens, The Effect of Company Campaigns on Certification Elections: Law and Reality Once Again, 36 INDUS. & LAB. REL. REV. 560 n.4 (1983); Richard B. Freeman, What Does the Future Holdfor U.S. Unionism? 44 INDUS. REL. INDUSTRIELLES 25 n.1 (1989). 4. See 2 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1937), 3 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1938), 4 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1939), 5 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1940), 25 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1960), 41 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1976), 62 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1997); Ronald L. Seeber & William N. Cooke, The Decline in Union Success in NLRB RepresentationElections, 22 INDUS. REL. 34 n.1 (1983). Seattle University Law Review [Vol. 23:549 1997 unions were winning only forty-eight percent of NLRB elections.5 While previous studies by industrial relations and legal scholars have scrutinized NLRB decisions and court rulings governing the conduct of representation elections,6 this paper analyzes instead the following issues, which are scarcely mentioned in the existing literature: why the NLRB "voluntarily" abandoned card certifications; how employers influenced and responded to developments in certification policy; and how changes in certification policy and employer electioneering affected the outcome of organizing campaigns. The paper focuses on the two decades following the NLRB's 1939 decision to abandon card certifications, during which time employers played an increasingly active role in opposing unionization. When the NLRB first held secret ballot elections in the 1930s, it intended the elections to function as "nothing but an investigation, a factual determination of who are the representatives of employees." 7 Within two decades, however, a number of landmark NLRB decisions and court rulings, as well as a subsequent increase in employer electioneering, had transformed representation campaigns into fiercely contested struggles between unions and management for workers' allegiance. I. WHY DID THE NLRB ABANDON CARD CERTIFICATIONS? [T]his issue of "cards versus ballots" . . . is central to our entire scheme of representation law, shaping the rest. Paul Weiler, 19808 Section 9(c) of the 1935 National Labor Relations [Wagner] Act (NLRA) stated that the NLRB could determine a union's majority status by ordering a secret ballot election, or by utilizing "any other appropriate method."9 Between 1935 and 1939, the Board certified many unions on the basis of signed authorization cards or other 5. See 62 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1997); Seeber & Cooke, supra note 4. 6. See Craig Becker, Democracy in the Workplace: Union RepresentationElections and Federal Labor Law, 77 MINN. L. REV. 495 n.3 (1993); Marcus H. Sandver & Herbert G. Heneman III, Union Growth Through the Election Process, 20 INDUS. REL. 109 n.1 (1981); Alan Story, Employer Speech, Union Representation Elections, and the First Amendment, 16 BERKELEY J. EMP. & LAB. L. 356 n.2 (1995). 7. National Labor Relations Act: Hearingson S. 2926 Before the Senate Comm. on Education and Labor, 73rd Cong., Second Sess., 1473-74 (1935) (statement of Robert F. Wagner). 8. PAUL WEILER, RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: NEW DIRECTIONS IN CANADIAN LABOUR LAW 48 (1980). 9. National Labor Relations Act § 9, 29 U.S.C. § 151 (enacted 1935). 2000] CertificationPolicy documentary evidence of majority support." Employer associations and their congressional allies attacked card certifications, accusing the Board of "forcing unionism through labor policy rather than selling it to the American workingman."" Until the late 1930s, however, NLRB officials consistently defended card certifications. When questioned whether he believed authorization cards constituted "sufficient evidence" of majority support, NLRB General Counsel Charles Fahy responded that Board members "consider signed cards very strong evidence of the desire of those who signed the cards to have the union representation." 2 By the late 1930s, however, Fahy recognized that employers' steadfast opposition to card certifications was creating serious procedural problems for the Board. In February 1938 Fahy asked regional NLRB attorneys to report on cases where employers had refused to recognize NLRB certifications based on authorization cards. 3 In these disputes, employers challenged unions' claims of majority support "in practically all such cases ... [and] argued that the employees were coerced and threatened by union officials or members in connection with the procuring of the applications for membership."14 Several NLRB officials believed that the questionable tactics of some union organizers had indeed contributed to problems over card certifications. Over-zealous union organizers, reported one NLRB attorney, "will 10. Approximately one quarter of all NLRB certifications between 1935-1939 were issued without secret ballot elections. See 1 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1936); 2 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1937); 3 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1938); 4 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1939); 5 NLRB ANN. REP. 1 (1940). 11. Report of the Special Conference Committee, 1935, (Feb. 13, 1936), in Special Conference Committee Folder (Hagley Museum and Library). The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) demanded that "no certification should be made by the NLRB as to the representatives of employees except as the result of a secret election." "Proposed Amendments to the Wagner Act," As Approved by the NAM Employment Relations Committee, November 30, 1938. (NAM papers, Industrial Relations Department, Box 21, Hagley Museum and Library). 12. PROCEEDINGS OF THE FOURTH MIDWEST CONFERENCE ON INDUSTRIAL (...truncated)