The Effect of Accelerated Certification Procedures on Union Organizing Success in Ontario

Thomason, Terry

doi:10.1177/001979399404700204

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…ULPs were initiated more frequently in British Columbia~21 per cent of campaigns! than was observed in Ontario~16 per cent of campaigns, Thomason, 1994!. Hence, the incidence of management opposition is greater in British Columbia -within a voting regime -despite the shorter processing times.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 81%

Union suppression and certification success

Riddell

2001

Canadian J of Economics

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Over the past decade a number of provinces have abandoned the long-standing Canadian tradition of automatic certification of unions based on card-signing and instead opted for mandatory representation voting. This trend, however, has developed with little understanding of the effectiveness of management opposition within a voting regime. In this paper the impact of union suppression on union organizing success within the voting regime of British Columbia is examined. We find that union suppression tactics were highly effective with estimates rivalling those found in the United States. Moreover, results from instrumental variable models suggest that OLS estimates may seriously underestimate the true impact of suppression.Effort de suppression du syndicat et succès dans le processus de certification. Au cours de la dernière décennie, un certain nombre de provinces canadiennes ont abandonné la pratique traditionnelle de certification automatique des syndicats sur la base des signatures de cartes d'adhésion au syndicat, et ont choisi de réclamer un scrutin pour déterminer le support des membres potentiels. On ne comprend pas bien l'efficacité de l'action d'opposition des patrons au syndicat dans ce régime de scrutin. Ce mémoire examine l'impact des efforts de suppression des syndicats sur les succès des syndicats dans leurs efforts d'organisation dans le cadre du régime de scrutin en Colombie Britannique. On découvre que ces tactiques ont été très efficaces, tout autant qu'aux Etats-Unis. De plus, les résultats obtenus à l'aide de modèles de variables instrumentales montrent que ceux qu'on obtient à l'aide de la méthode des moindres carrés ordinaires peuvent sous-évaluer l'impact des tactiques de suppression de manière significative.

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Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 81%

Union suppression and certification success

Riddell

2001

Canadian J of Economics

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“…As shown in Appendix 2, it was rare for a union in one of the card-check regimes in British Columbia to fail to gather 55% supportsufficient for certification without a vote. This was also the case in Ontario over the 1980 to 1988 period (Thomason 1994). Thus, in the card-check years, many organizing drives were virtually completed before the employer was aware of the drive.…”

Section: V-4w-4 V--4 W-4p-4w--4---mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…"15Canadian studies of employer tactics include Thomason (1994), Thomason time of the current organizing drive. Use of this instrument, like the first, is based on the reasoning that ULP processing times in excess of certification processing times reduce the incentive to file a ULP.…”

Section: Data and Methodological Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They also provided evidence that the incidence of management opposition is reduced in a card-check system. However, the latter conclusion appears to be primarily based on a comparison of U.S. evidence with evidence from two Canadian studies- Thomason (1994) and Thomason and Pozzebon (1998)-neither of which had variation in the union recognition law. Comparing results from the two countries may not yield appropriate conclusions.…”

Section: Previous Studies Of the Union Recognition Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Union Certification Success under Voting versus Card-Check Procedures: Evidence from British Columbia, 1978–1998

Riddell

2004

ILR Review

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The author estimates the impact of compulsory election laws on certification success using data on over 6,500 private sector certifications from British Columbia over the years 1978-98. A unique quasi-experimental design is used by exploiting two changes in the union recognition law: first, in 1984, the introduction of mandatory elections; and second, in 1993, the repeal of elections and their replacement by the original card-check procedure. The author also estimates the effectiveness of management opposition tactics across union recognition regimes. Success rates declined by an average of 19 percentage points during the voting regime, and then increased by about the same amount when card-checks were re-instituted. The results indicate that the mandatory election law can account for virtually the entire decline. In addition, the findings suggest that management opposition was twice as effective under elections as under card-checks. Sne of the most important public policies affecting the union organizing process is the recognition procedure, that is, the mechanism by which the union attempts to demonstrate that it has sufficient support within the proposed bargaining unit to be certified. Up to the late 1980s, all Canadian provinces (except Nova Scotia after 1977) had "card-check" procedures, whereby the union could be certified without an election if it signed up a sufficient proportion of the proposed bargaining unit. The proportion required to avoid an election varied by province, but generally ranged between 50% and 55%. While it was possible for a certification bid to require a vote in a card-check province, few organizing drives actually went to an election. The Canadian system in those years contrasts starkly with the system in the United States and, until the 1999 Employment Relations Bill, with that in the United Kingdomalthough for very different reasons. As a result, the union recognition procedure

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“…Under such a system, if a union collected a simple majority (50% plus one) of authorization cards from the bargaining unit, there would be no requirement to hold a union certification election and the employer would be required to recognize the union. This procedure has been widely implemented in Canada, and research demonstrates that employers committing unfair labor practices during union organizing campaigns are much less prevalent in Canada (Thomason, 1994;Murphy, 1988).…”

Section: Conclusion: the Importance Of The Emotional Path In High-tecmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Tech Production Workers’ Fear of Unionizing: A Wheeler–McClendon Model Analysis of a Union Organizing Campaign at a US Medical Electronics Factory

Devinatz

2005

Employ Respons Rights J

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Using the framework of the Wheeler and McClendon (1991) theory of employee support for unionization, the purpose of this article is to examine an unsuccessful unionization drive in a US medical electronics factory that the author took part in while working as a production worker during 1983 in order to gain insight into why unionization is so difficult to promote among production workers in high-tech industry. I argue that high-tech companies take advantage of the inherent fear in production employees to organize in order to defeat unionization campaigns. That is, they negatively affect employee support for unionization through the development of inhibiting conditions of the emotional path of the WheelerMcClendon theory to prevent unionization. The use of this widespread strategy is crucial for understanding such low rates of unionization in this industry.KEY WORDS: union organizing; managerial opposition; high-tech industry.With the decades-long decline in collective bargaining coverage in the United States, from a union density of approximately 37% in 1946 to little over a third of that nearly 60 years later, union organizing in the late 20th/early 21st centuries has been correctly viewed as an integral route not only for the revitalization, but also for the mere survival of the US labor movement. While the number of union members continued to increase throughout the 1970s, union density continued to spiral downward as labor organizations were unable to recruit new members as fast as the labor force was expanding. By 1980, at 21%, union density was less than 60% of its post-World War II peak; by 1995, it had fallen below 15% (Bronfenbrenner et al., 1998). In October 1995, John Sweeney won the first contested election for the presidency of the AFL-CIO in which he promised to reinvigorate union organizing on a massive scale. Shortly after taking office, he followed through with this promise by investing $ 20 million "to support coordinated large-scale industry-based organizing drives" (p. 1). And the following summer, the AFL-CIO sent more than 1000 college students and young workers into the field to help with unionization drives across the country.

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The Effect of Accelerated Certification Procedures on Union Organizing Success in Ontario

Cited by 21 publications

References 19 publications

Union suppression and certification success

Union suppression and certification success

Union Certification Success under Voting versus Card-Check Procedures: Evidence from British Columbia, 1978–1998

High-Tech Production Workers’ Fear of Unionizing: A Wheeler–McClendon Model Analysis of a Union Organizing Campaign at a US Medical Electronics Factory

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