What playing field will be leveled ?
Ahhh, the playing field that doesn't have any fucking jobs, sooper ......
Blah! Blah! Blah!
The fact of the matter is that when the unions were at their zenith jobs were not in short supply. By, the Reagan years, they had declined due to a number of factors, not the least of which was leadership apathy and public animosity.
Then, through a series of legislative changes and bureaucratic rule interpretations the unions began a precipitous decline to where we now see the unions comprising less than 10% of the private work force. All that this law will do is allow workers to choose unions without the systematic intimidation and retaliation that employers engage in when they fight a unionization campaign.
If you really believe that if unions are allowed this kind of election regulation jobs will be lost as a direct result, kindly enlighten us with some kind of real evidence. And, I’m not talking about some corporate propaganda piece.
Ok, i'll give you some REAL WORLD evidence, not like some link you wingnuts find on a google search.
I'm an operations manager of a mid size company. The division i oversee has 23 field employees. These guys make a range of $50,000 to $80,000 per year for UNSKILLED labor. They have also have a full benefits package ( health, paid holidays, vacations, 3 paid sick days per year, etc...). A lot of them being the sole bread winner for their families. Let's say one day one of these union organizers fill a few of these guys heads with a lot of B.S. ( and make no mistake, thats what these organizers do). The company doesn't even get to tell their side of the story ( which i bet you didn't even know about this bill ). Then guess what happens ? The union muscles its way in, makes up a bunch of stupid rules (which the union will label as "rights") that doesn't allow us to operate the company efficiently enough to pay these guys the high salary that we pay them without the company losing money. Then one of two things happen:
A) The company goes out of business and all of these people lose their very well paying jobs along with the management, administrative personnel, etc...
or much more likely
B) The company gets rid of its field employees and does the work with sub contractors.
Now what good will this act do again ?
Your post isn’t evidence of anything. It’s your imaginary scenario of what you fear might happen if a union engaged in a campaign to unionize your company.
I worked for a union international for ten years. So, I’ll beg your pardon if I rely on my real world experience and labor law education rather than your imaginary scenario.
First of all, unions are much more interested in organizing companies that are less generous to their employees. It’s much more difficult, even in the days when the weight of the government wasn’t against the unions, to organize a company that is populated with a majority of satisfied and happy employees. In such a case the disgruntled exceptions wouldn’t get any traction with the happy majority.
Second, it’s the union that can’t tell its side of the story in an organizing campaign. The employer has no obligation under the law to give organizers access to its workers on its property. All that the employer must do, after the union has obtained at least 50% of the employees’ signatures on union election cards, is furnish the union with what’s called an “Excelsior list”. It’s the same thing as a voter roll in a public election. From the time that the employer becomes aware that a campaign is in progress, which is usually very soon after it commences, it is completely allowed to hold employee informational meetings on its property on its time and to furnish as many informational flyers, brochures and letters as it chooses.
What commonly happens with the Excelsior list is that it is incomplete and riddled with errors. In recent times, the Labor Board has ignored the law and routinely ruled that even though the employer has engaged in “unfair labor practices”, a prohibited activity, no election in the employer’s favor is overturned. So, the union is often unable to identify who the employees are right up to the day of an election, if it ever gets that far.
On the rare occasions when the combined efforts of the employer and the government fail to stop an organizing campaign, the union doesn’t “muscle its way in and make up a bunch of stupid rules (which the union will label as ‘rights’

”. It simply isn’t in the union’s best interests to force a company out of business because they lose those members and the revenues they generate in terms of union dues. More often, a company that goes out of business after being organized was destined to do so anyway because of bad business decisions to start with. More often than not, a company that has mistreated its employees doesn’t have their loyalty and suffers from the long term effects of poor moral and employee animosity.
What happens most often is that for a time the employer attempts to avoid good faith negotiations and then the parties eventually settle into a routine of negotiations that results in a set of work rules that afford the workers a process for fair and just discipline procedure and wage rules. The vast majority of wage rules give fair treatment to each class of workers, i.e., pipefitters, janitors, carpenters, foremen, and so on.
Generally, each class of workers is paid the same rate of pay. In some cases, seniority entitles them to graduated pay levels. And, rather then a system of favoritism, workers are able to get job assignments and promotions based on seniority. The manager’s brother-in-law who would get promotions even though he’s an incompetent buffoon, can’t do so in the union environment.
Under
current labor law, employers involved in labor disputes with unions can be forced to accept mediation and/or binding arbitration. Myself, I’m against binding arbitration because the vast majority of arbitrators are biased in favor of the employer because the vast majority are former company labor relations officers who have gone back to school and become arbitrators. The ten years that I worked for a rail union was all as an arbitration advocate presenting disputes to the National Railroad Adjustment Board, the rail industry equivalent of the Nation Labor Relations Board. So I am very familiar with hundreds of the arbitrators and their backgrounds.
The bottom line is that few employers fail because of union activity. And, very few “enlightened” employers like your company are targeted for union organizing, for obvious reasons. And, non-union employers have the power and the definite legal advantage in an organizing campaign. Your imaginary scenario is simply mistaken.
BTW, I am a small business owner now and have owned another business a number of years ago. So before you jump to uniformed conclusions about who I am and what I know you'd be better served to talk about what you really know rather than what you think you know.