This is my contribution for those who presently do not trust management nor unions for the correct answer. The B.S., myths, legends and stories end here. The following is from the website. YOU DECIDE.
NLRB secret ballot elections
- Most private-sector unions have been established at workplaces through secret ballot elections in which a majority of employees vote to approve a bargaining representative. This process typically entails the following major steps:
• Union organizers identify a preliminary bargaining unit of employees that they want to unionize, and organizers gather signatures from these employees to show that at least 30% of them are interested in being represented by a union.
• Union organizers submit these signatures to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which determines if the proposed bargaining unit is appropriate and if other legal requirements to conduct a union election are met.
• The NLRB conducts a secret ballot election. If the majority of employees vote to approve a union, the union becomes "the exclusive representatives of all the employees" in the bargaining unit "for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment…."
Under FEDERAL LAW, the NLRB must have "reasonable cause to believe" that "a substantial number of employees … wish to be represented" by a union before conducting a secret ballot election. The NLRB has the authority to regulate what this means, and it requires the signatures of at least 30% of employees to meet this standard.
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In the federal government's 2013 fiscal year, 94% of all NLRB elections to establish a union took place within 56 days from the filing of the election petition. The median time was 38 days.
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In NLRB-conducted secret ballot elections to establish unions at private-sector workplaces:
• The time and place of the election is set by the NLRB.
• NLRB agents count the ballots, and all parties are allowed to be present during this process.
• The union or employer may contest the results of an election by filing objections with the NLRB.
FEDERAL LAW prohibits employers and unions from encouraging or discouraging employees to support unions by rewarding, punishing, or threatening to reward or punish employees. This restriction applies to hiring, tenure, or "any term or condition of employment."
FEDERAL LAW states that the above prohibitions do not censor employers or unions from expressing "any views, argument, or opinion," as long as "such expression contains no threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit" to employees.
The NLRB has adopted a policy of setting aside any election that "was accompanied by conduct that the NLRB thinks created an atmosphere of confusion or fear of reprisals and thus interfered with the employees' freedom of choice."
Per the NLRB:
In any particular case, the NLRB does not attempt to determine whether the conduct actually interfered with the employees' expression of free choice, but rather asks whether the conduct tended to do so. If it is reasonable to believe that the conduct would tend to interfere with the free expression of the employees' choice, the election may be set aside.
The NLRB and federal courts have created the following rules for private-sector union election campaigns:
• Employers are required to give the unions the names and home addresses of all employees who are eligible to vote.
• Union organizers can visit employees at their homes to lobby them, but employers cannot.
• Employers can hold mandatory group meetings during work hours to lobby employees if the employers pay employees full compensation for their time.
• Employers cannot call employees into a superior's office to lobby them.
• Employers cannot ask employees how they intend to vote.
• Union organizers, advocates, and opponents who are company employees can lobby their co-workers on company property and during nonworking hours in nonworking areas (such as lunch rooms).
• Union organizers, advocates, and opponents who are company employees can lobby their co-workers on company property and during work hours "unless the employer can demonstrate that a restriction is necessary to maintain production or discipline." Thus, if the company has a policy forbidding all forms of solicitations and lobbying during work hours, this also applies to union-related actions.
• Employers can prohibit non-employees from lobbying on company property unless it is "impossible or unreasonably difficult for a union to distribute organizational literature to employees entirely off of the employer's premises…."
• Employers and unions are banned from giving "speeches on company time to massed assemblies of employees within 24 hours before the scheduled time for an election."
• Unions can videotape and photograph employees who support or reject a union, and unions can circulate these videos and pictures without the consent of the recorded employees. Employers generally cannot engage in such activities, but they can videotape union organizing activities if the employer has a "reasonable basis to expect misconduct," such as violence, trespassing, or vandalism.
- In cases where the NLRB decides that an election rule has been broken, it typically conducts a rerun election. However, in at least two such cases, the NLRB has ordered employers to recognize and bargain with unions without having a rerun election.