Bill Schurgin Quoted in Corporate Legal Times

An article in the September issue of Corporate Legal Times ("Labor & Employment, the State of the Union") includes a comment from Bill Schurgin on the recent fracture in the AFL-CIO with the SEIU and the Teamsters. "The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Teamsters officially seceded from the AFL-CIO in late July with the United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE poised to follow. These organizations are part of a new labor coalition known as the Coalition To Win. Labor experts believe this split could be bad news for business. The Coalition To Win is already pushing more aggressive tactics than its predecessor and is looking to significantly increase membership."

"Labor and employment attorney Bill Schurgin, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago, believes that the Coalition To Win will put pressure on corporations to use card check neutrality, a method of unionizing employees that replaces a secret ballot election. With this method, unions run anti-corporate campaigns to persuade workers to sign union cards. If a majority of employees sign cards, the employer recognizes the union." "Historically, organizing has been conducted from a bottom up standpoint," Schurgin says. "A union got a group of employees at a particular facility interested in unionization. They solicited other employees. They had an election at that facility. Then they used that to go to the next facility. Top down organizing means that they put pressure on the highest levels of the organization to agree to this concept of card check neutrality. With one success, they can then have the opportunity to organize multiple facilities."