While union participation reached a record-low of 10% last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, strike activity was on the rise, with workers leading 33 major work stoppages, a 24-year high.HR pros can play a strategic role in helping management navigate unionization efforts, and to best guide them, HR needs to understand what they legally can and cannot do, according to Devora Lindeman, an employment lawyer at New York City-based firm Greenwald Doherty, LLP. A misstep, she said, can result in an unfair labor practice charge from the National Labor Relations Board.
Lindeman and John Frehse, the global head of labor strategy at consulting firm Ankura, shared with HR Brew what people pros need to know.
What you can’t do. When advising companies on how they legally cannot respond to unionization efforts, Lindemand said she uses a handy acronym: TIPS, or threaten, interrogate, promise, and surveil.
Threats, Lindeman told HR Brew, may include telling employees you’ll take away vacation days or shorten lunch breaks if they join a union, and interrogating may involve asking probing, union-related questions, like “Did you have a union meeting last night?” or “Are you going to vote for the union?”
Companies can’t make promises related to employment, Lindeman said. “They can’t say, ‘If you vote down the union, I’ll give you an extra holiday. If you don’t let the union in here, we’re going to give everybody a 2% wage hike.’” And they can’t surveil employees to uncover union information, she said, using the example of reviewing video footage of a union rep handing out flyers as a way to gauge employees’ interest in unionizing.
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What you can do. Lindeman also shared an acronym to help HR pros remember how they can respond to unionization efforts: FOE, or facts, opinions, and examples.
HR can provide employees facts, like telling them that unions have membership dues, and share opinions, like, “We have a good employer right now. We’ve got lots of benefits…So, in my opinion, you don’t need a union,” Lindeman said. They can also share factual examples, she said, such as union-related news.
She recommended companies hire a lawyer and a union consultant who can help facilitate conversations with employees. “Very often, these union consultants are people who used to be union organizers, and now they work on the management side, so a labor lawyer and a labor consultant can help the company understand what they can do, should do, [and] shouldn’t do,” Lindeman said.
What you should do. Another crucial element of navigating unionization involves listening to employees, Frehse told HR Brew.
“If I’m an hourly employee…and leaders aren’t listening to me, and I have problems or concerns, I’m going to find someone else to listen to me,” Frehse said.
HR should try to strike a balance between communicating and listening for the areas of opportunity, he said. “That means not sitting in an office waiting for employees to come to them with problems, but constantly being out in the field or on the shop floor asking questions, and taking notes, and getting back to employees with answers.”