Corporate Campaigns: Vehicle to Forced Unionism and Political Payback

Let’s call a spade a spade. Corporate Campaigns, the targeting of businesses by labor unions, exists for one reason and one reason only — to rescue the Gasping Dinosaurs that are today’s labor unions — thereby assuring continued power for certain politicians through labor’s massive political contributions. Despite the disingenuous claims of labor unions and their supporters during the campaigns for the need to protect the worker and to provide “social justice,” the true reason for the use of such campaigns is to allow Big Labor bosses the opportunity to take advantage of past NLRB decisions that allow for mutual consent between unions and employers so as to circumvent the secret ballot election in organizational recognition campaigns.  This is permitted despite the fact that the NLRB’s mission statement clearly states:

Under the Act, the NLRB has two primary functions:

• To conduct secret-ballot elections among employees to determine whether or not the employees wish to be represented by a union; and

• To prevent and remedy statutorily defined unfair labor practices by employers and unions.

Unfortunately, past decisions have warped this mission to allow the bypassing of the traditional American freedom of the secret ballot election in the guise of protecting employees from ruthless employer intimidation. Whereas at one time there may have been such a need, the legislative creation of OSHA, the DOL, the NLRB, the EEOC, and state “Wage and Hour” divisions, as well as a modern civil view by most employers recognizing that their employees are valuable assets, has rendered the role of big labor almost non-essential in today’s world. This is where the rub surfaces. Big labor is fighting for its life, and the political party it supports knows that if big labor fails their major source of funding dries up. Hence, draconian measures to survive must be implemented.

Big labor recognizes its need to have a vehicle to continue to bring in new members and expand a dwindling base that now represents less than 12% of the total workforce (and less than 7% of the private work force). Big Labor political cronies are reliant on union campaign donations to survive. Enter the “Corporate Campaign,” which takes advantage of the NLRA loophole to circumvent the secret ballot election when there is mutual agreement of recognition by the union and the employer. The key word here is mutual.  Webster’s Dictionary defines mutual as something “shared in common” — such as mutual respect. The use of “corporate campaigns” by big labor against employers to eliminate the secret ballot election through use of the misnamed “Neutrality Agreement” is anything but mutual and certainly does not involve respect. In fact, the most striking thing about the Neutrality Agreement is its utter lack of neutrality.  The “agreement” is forced upon employers by labor union threats.  In entering the agreement, the employer is forced into a “card check” scenario, and in return receives only the agreement of the labor union not to make good on its threats.

The dirty little secret that certain politicians and their big labor benefactors don’t want to admit is that virtually no company would ever agree to eliminate the secret ballot election under normal circumstances. Corporate Campaigns are not “normal circumstances,” nor are they designed to be. They are, as described in my book, The Devil at My Doorstep, designed to financially and/or psychologically cripple an employer and coerce the employer into capitulating and signing the one sided Neutrality Agreement. Corporate campaigns are ruthless wars waged against unsuspecting employers by big labor bosses who have decided the employer is a fat business/financial target, not because of employee abuses, but rather because of the potential membership dues and big payday for big labor. Corporate campaigns are initiated on the premise that the employees have invited them to town. This is very rarely true. The unions are often nothing more than “Uninvited Interlopers,” whose services have not been requested by any employee of the organization.  Have you seen in the mainstream news media lately any stories covering employees being abused by employers? Considering the media’s liberal bias, don’t you think you would find a plethora of stories if they existed?

Corporate Campaigns, as described  in SEIU and Its Corporate Campaigns,  are vicious scams designed to “shame” employers into signing the Neutrality Agreement thereby eliminating the secret ballot election, instituting card check, placing a gag order on the employer from discussing the potential downside of unionization,  and requiring a Neutrality Letter, written by the union, to be signed by the employer and sent to the employees indicating the employers agreement and desire to expedite contract negotiation. Perhaps the most troubling provision, however, requires the employer to provide the union a list of all its employees and their home addresses. With card check firmly in place, the union will visit each employee’s home. This opens the door to potential concerns of coercion and harassment of them into signing a union card until the union has obtained 50% plus 1 of the employees signed up, at which time the company is now union and the employees are forced unionized.

Wait a minute — wasn’t the original intent to protect employees from intimidation? Oh that’s right — protect them from intimidation from employers, not big labor. The truth is that the Neutrality Agreement and the corporate campaign utilized to obtain it are not mutual in any respect. It is simply forced unionism. Can you imagine a legitimate business targeting another legitimate business and running such a campaign until the targeted business capitulates and agrees to do business with the aggressor company? I think not. Why is this exception made for the Gasping Dinosaurs, and their political allies? How are they permitted to use such means to justify and protect their very existence from extinction despite the fact that the majority of American workers have voted with their feet and have chosen to work for non-union companies.

The truth is that big labor and their political cronies don’t care what the majority of American’s think. They only care about their own selfish needs and are intent on achieving Card Check through Regulation vs. Legislation in order to avoid extinction. Americans: Beware of Rogue NLRB before it is too late.

About the author: David A. Bego is the President and CEO of EMS, an industry leader in the field of environmental workplace maintenance, employing nearly 5000 workers in thirty-three states. Bego is the author of “The Devil at My Doorstep,” based on his experiences fighting back against one of the most powerful unions in existence today.