By Sean Higgins, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Union allies in Congress are trying to force the House to vote on legislation called the Faster Labor Contracts Act. The legislation would amend the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to effectively ensure that unions secure contracts with management within 100 days of winning a workplace election. Passing the legislation is a major project of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The problem is that standard union-management contracts can take far longer than that to hammer out, sometimes as long as a year. There are often many issues to resolve, and both sides need time to work out the details in a way both parties can accept. If negotiations reach an impasse, it’s usually for a reason. The Faster Labor Contracts Act would instead force workers into union contracts before the terms are fully understood.
Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) filed a discharge petition on the legislation Monday. That will force the House to set a vote on it. The Senate version is co-sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). The lawmakers argue the legislation is necessary to prevent needless delays in getting contracts.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act would impose a strict 100-day time limit from when the workers vote to organize to when a contract with management is completed – 10 days to start negotiations and another 90 days to complete them. After that, an arbitration panel would step in and force a deal on both sides. In most cases, the 100-day threshold is a point when they are just beginning negotiations. Imposing a contract in this manner should always be a last resort, if allowed at all. The legislation would instead make this the default way of doing things.
This assumes that a majority of the workers even want the union. What if the election is disputed? A major issue in union elections is determining which workers are eligible to vote. Another frequent issue is whether any ballot-related shenanigans have happened. Should management believe the election was not on the up-and-up, under the Faster Labor Contracts Act, they would have just 10 days to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that oversees the elections. The legislation would not guarantee that the NLRB would address their concerns in time. The contract would come first, and once the arbitration panel makes its decision any election-related concerns would become a dead issue.
For union leaders, the important part is just getting the contract signed. The fact that it is flawed or potentially unworkable is secondary to generating union dues. Unions typically demand that contracts contain so-called security clauses, provisions that require management to automatically deduct union dues from workers’ paychecks and route them into the labor organization’s account. That’s the real reason for the urgency to get the contract.
Sean Higgins is a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute specializing in labor and employment issues.
