NLRB Decisions Significantly Affect Union Organizing Initiatives

As their density in the private sector has steadily diminished, unions have increasingly relied on new strategies to gain additional members. Two of those strategies involve the use of voluntary recognition (i.e. card check) agreements and the use of union “salts,” or applicants for employment whose goal is organizing the employer’s workforce if they are hired. The strategies are often intertwined to the extent that “salting” campaigns are frequently used to harass employers into voluntary recognition agreements. These neutrality and card check recognition agreements typically require the employer to remain neutral about the benefits and potential detriments of union membership and to recognize the union automatically if it collects signed authorization cards from a majority of employees in the unit it seeks to represent. Unions thereby bypass the employee’s right to vote on union representation in a secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB. The two decisions discussed below may seriously undermine these union tactics.