The Biden administration created the White House Task Force on Worker Organization and Empowerment on April 26, 2021. The task force recently released a pro-union report with the overall goal of promoting worker organizing in both the public and private sectors. The Task Force stated its goal was to remove barriers to union organizing efforts.
The task force, chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, included sweeping recommendations in its report. These recommendations stand to impact the business operations in both the public and private sector.
State of Union Organizing
The report makes a point of emphasis the steady decline in private sector union membership since 1970 while public sector union membership during the period actually increased. Private sector union membership has dropped to 6.1% the lowest level since the government started tracking the statistic. The public sector rate declined from 34.8% in 2020 when many government workers were furloughed due to the pandemic, to 33.9%. But even this disproportionately high number, when added to the total, was not enough to prevent the overall rate to matching 2019’s all-time low of 10.3%.
Push to Aid Union Organizing
The administration made no secret that the motivation in forming the task force was to strengthen unions and union organizing efforts nationwide. The report suggests federal agencies advertise unions to new employees, and to any private sector companies with which they contract. The government sanction of a union’s organizing effort stands to impact the ability to resist unionization. The task force’s suggestion amounts to forced unionization of private sector companies. The thinly veiled implication that being unionized is preferred by the federal government leaves private businesses a Hobson’s choice. Does the business walk away from lucrative government contract opportunities, or accept the Big Labor intrusion into its culture and operations as a pay to play extortion?
Report Recommendations
The report contains seventy recommendations! These progressive, activist steps are self-described by the task force to achieve 3 goals: 1. To position the federal government as a model actor; 2. To use the federal government’s authority to support worker empowerment by providing information, improving transparency, and making sure pro-worker services are delivered in a timely manner; and 3. To use longstanding authority to leverage the federal government’s purchase power and spending power to support workers who are organizing and pro-worker (read pro-union) employers. Completely lost on the task force are the facts that not every worker believes unions are in their individual best interest or that not every employer who is not unionized is somehow not pro-worker.
The report recommends the launch of a “know your rights” initiative to educate employees on their statutory rights to organize and collectively bargain. The proposal would see public dollars utilized to actively promote labor unions, the same labor unions whose actions, or lack of the same, have caused unionization rates to drop by more than half in the last forty years.
The report further recommends that the Department of Labor recognize unions as lead applicants for department of labor grants. This would give unions an outsized and massive boost in funding for worker training and other services while neglecting and disadvantaging the remaining 90% of the workforce that the Department’s own statistics above indicate are not unionized.
Implementation
The report recommends both executive and legislative action be undertaken to increase funding to unions and to pro-union organizations. The task force wants to use the power of the federal government to promote unions as the only acceptable option for workers. The edicts, if implemented, would provide unions with a level of financial backing that would severely challenge employers, especially small businesses, in resisting an organizing effort.
The task force claimed its efforts were to empower workers. The fallacy of the claim lies in its single-minded conclusion that membership in, and payment of dues to, unions is the only way employees can possibly be empowered. The task force, and its recommendations, acted as a ruse to empower unions and their organizing efforts, not employees.
How Businesses Should React
This outsized influence, and veiled economic pressure, from the federal government stands to be daunting for any employer, but especially small businesses. Business leaders must prepare. How many of the task force’s recommendations make it to executive or legislative implementation remains unknown. In the post-pandemic, war-torn world businesses currently navigate, the mantra “prepare for the worst; hope for the best” applies.
Every business should:
- evaluate its risk of unionization
- prepare a proactive union avoidance strategy
- engage in leadership training designed to maximize employee/leadership communication
- train leaders and supervisors on the dos and don’ts of addressing union activity
- monitor and adjust to changes in labor laws and regulations regularly
- create a rapid response team to deal with labor issues.
The White House task force, and the report it produced, confirmed the Biden administration’s self-proclaimed goal as being the most union friendly administration in history is well on its way to fruition. Despite the claim, employers can weather this storm – it they prepare. If you need help preparing or implementing a strategy to stay union-free, or you have other labor relations needs, reach out to NLRA today.