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Lawrence Mishel
President, Economic Policy Institute

That’s how the Washington Post fact checker, Glenn Kessler, put it in his review of the following assertion used in the Super Bowl ad (watch below) by the Center for Union Facts*: “Only ten percent of people in unions today actually voted to join the union.”

Kessler dug in to see where that came from and apparently it is an “estimate [of the] the proportion of employees who both would have voted for the establishment of a union at their companies and were still in their jobs.” As Kessler points out, this has no bearing on the extent to which workers currently covered by collective bargaining would vote to maintain collective bargaining. It is as relevant, as Jared Bernstein points out, as “saying Virginia isn’t a state because none of its current residents voted for statehood.”

What are the facts? Richard Freeman (Harvard University) and Joel Rogers (University of Wisconsin) report on page 69 in their book, What Workers Want, that 90 percent of union workers wanted to keep their union based on their answer to the question, “If a new election were held today to decide whether to keep the union at your company, would you vote to keep the union or get rid of it?”

Union workers have many special legal rights and protections. For instance, union workers by law have the right to vote for union officers and any dues increase, initiation fee or assessment. The laws protecting internal union democracy are far stricter than those for corporate governance and shareholder rights. Plus, workers also have clear rights to decertify unions. This ad and this “fact” do not capture what union worker rights are nor even attempt to reflect what union workers’ views are of collective bargaining. (more…)

Demonstrating their demand for a first labor contract, two dozen members of the United Steelworkers (USW) local at Haynes International’s Tubular Products plant in Arcadia, La., set up a picket line Wednesday.

The group picketed in front of the plant for nearly half an hour, ignoring an order from a company guard that they leave. At one point, the guard pointed at bargaining committee chair David Bradford and said, “You, come here!” Bradford and union brothers from the Arcadia stood their ground and finished their picket.

Members know the picket was effective for two reasons. One is they witnessed members of management leave the building to find out what was going on. The other is that after the picket, a fellow worker called the group to say he wanted to join the union. Louisiana is a right-to-work (for less) state where workers are not required to join the union at their employers or pay dues that cover the cost of union services.

USW members from Local 1505 at Graphic Packaging stood in solidarity with the Arcadia workers during the picket.

In September of 2010, the workers at Haynes Arcadia voted more than 2 to 1 for union representation. Since then, for 17 months, Haynes has refused to settle a first contract with the local. Most recently, Haynes rebuffed all attempts by the workers to schedule bargaining in February and March.

Haynes recently contended that “the negotiating process is causing delays” in delivery and production. At the same time, however, it reported to shareholders in its proxy statement on Jan. 27, 2012:

“Our manufacturing group shipped a record 23.6 million pounds of product. We also implemented a “supermarket pull system: to increase efficiency in high volume products and identified and reduced bottlenecks in critical operations.” (underline added)

Workers have identified the real cause of delays – it’s Haynes negotiator Jean Neel.