Why Union Avoidance?

Benjamin Franklin is famous for saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  While many of us, more than two hundred years later see this saying as related to health, the truth is Franklin was referring to fire prevention.  After a visit to the city of Boston, Franklin realized that it was much better prepared to fight fires than his home city of Philadelphia.  Upon returning home, Franklin made it his mission to make sure Philadelphia was prepared and able to avert disaster by fire.  He worked with civic leaders to form a proactive plan for dealing with fires.

A union takeover of your workforce would burn down your business as you know it today.  This short article will explain why it is much better to plan for this fire than react to it once it has started.  The analogy may seem like hyperbole, but I assure you, forced unionization of your company would be every bit as destructive as setting fire to your facility and not having fire insurance.

A company’s motivation to remain non-union lies squarely in three basic principles: fairness, costs, and control.  Let’s take a brief look at each.

Nearly every union begin their campaign to the workers with the mantra of fairness and equality.  The fact is that unions are often less fair in their treatment of employees.  One of the most unfair principles espoused by unions is the concept of superseniority.  One of the country’s largest unions defines superseniority as the automatic placement of union officers at the top of seniority lists for purposes.  Think about that principle for a second.  Because an employee managed to get placed in an officer position by the union, they move to the top of the list ahead of employees who have been at the job longer, or even those who may have better skill sets.  So, if a layoff becomes necessary, the employer may be forced to layoff more senior employees or employees who possess better skills in order to preserve the jobs of the select few union officers.

Union favorites receive other perks that most employees do not such as extra pay from the union, extra time off to attend meetings and conventions, all-expense-paid trips to meetings and conventions, and more.  The impact on the morale of other employees is significant.  Unions have complete authority on whether or not to process an employee’s grievance.  Unions possess the exclusive right to bargain over terms and conditions for the employees.  They can, and often do, accept lower wages and less benefits for employees to get something that only benefits the union organization.

You have an obligation to all your employees to ensure they are not caught up in a process that leaves many of them behind or neglected.  You have spent precious time, money, and resources building a successful business.  Allowing a third party to mistreat portions of your workforce, hurting morale and productivity, is simply not acceptable.

The first reaction to every business faced with a union threatening to organize its workers is “we can’t afford to go union.”  That statement is much truer and the costs much more severe than most business owners realize!

Before taking into account wages and benefits costs, the reality is all businesses who become unionized see a significant spike in basic overhead costs.  In his book, “Union Proof – Creating Your Successful Union Free Strategy,” author Peter J. Bergeron notes that the cost of operating a unionized organization is estimated to be 25 to 35 percent higher than a union-free organization.  Unionized organizations by necessity employ more extensive human resources staff, require increased legal counsel, find themselves with increased involvement with regulatory agencies, lose flexibility, and suffer increased labor costs due to rules on overtime, grievances and arbitration processing, and many other requirements.

Then there are wage and benefits increases.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics has determined that union compensation is 22% higher than nonunion compensation on average.  Even more disturbing is that the statistics show that the trend line for wage and benefit inflation for union companies is increasing faster than the nonunion trend.  With union increases outpacing nonunion increases by nearly 50%, it is easy to see why union membership has declined to only 6.4% of the private sector workforce.  The economics just don’t work.

Believe it or not, there is a much more serious motivating factor for doing everything possible to avoid unionization of your workforce – control of your business.  Unions are quick with their empty rhetoric in this topic.  They claim that the company’s success is their success.  These claims are shown for the hot air that they are by the actions of unions.  The unions, through their desired contract language, seek to tell you when you can work, what kind of work you can do, who you can have do that work, how much you must pay for that work, how that work will be done, the level of quality for that work, and more.  Every collective bargaining agreement in the United States is filled with provisions dictating how each of those items are handled, stripping away the freedom of businesses to operate and make needed adjustments in a competitive market.

Of course, there is even more restriction on how you operate your business.  The union dictates how you discipline, reward, promote, hire, and fire employees.  The unions insert themselves into virtually every aspect of your business.  Many unions even demand a role in whether you can sell the business, merge with another business, or otherwise change the structure of the company.  Allowing a union into your company is like bringing on a very vocal partner who has no economic skin in the game and has virtually unlimited power to control every action the company undertakes and who suffers no consequence for the decisions they force upon the organization.

These posts are dedicated to providing some best practices to assist you in developing a union avoidance strategy.  If you find yourself under attack already, or if you just want to discuss your particular situation, reach out to NLRA today.  We will listen to your needs and discuss solutions.