NAFTA: Another obstacle to organizing

By Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the January 24, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

According to a study team led by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University, the threat to close a plant is an "extremely pervasive and effective component of employer or anti-union strategies."

Employers threaten to close the plant in 50 percent of all organizing campaigns, with unions winning only a third of them compared to a 47 percent win rate where no threat occurs. More to the point, more than 60 percent of employers in manufacturing industries threatened to close plants during organizing drives compared to about 35 percent in constructions and/or service industries like health care.

Bronfenbrenner attributes this differential to the fact that the products of hospitals are not "mobile," while those of manufacturing facilities are. "In these more mobile industries, the win rate with threats averaged only 23 percent," she wrote.

The study says that in the majority of cases, threats to close are a "direct component" of the employers ant-union campaign rather than its deteriorating financial condition. "Plant closings tend to occur in the overall context of aggressive anti-union behavior by employers," its authors wrote. Overall 64 percent of employers in the survey ran an aggressive anti-union campaigns, but in campaigns with plant closing threats the percentage of employers who ran aggressive campaigns reaches 83 percent.

Given that direct unambiguous threats to close the plant in response to union organizing activity is clearly in violation of the law, most employers chose to make their threats indirectly.

For Bronfenbrenner, the most blatant example of this involved a UAW campaign at ITT Automotive in Michigan in March 1995 where the company parked 13 flat-bed tractor- trailers loaded with shrink-wrapped production equipment in front of the plant for the duration of the campaign with large hot-pink signs posted on the side which read "Mexico Transfer Job." The equipment came from a production line the company had closed over the weekend without warning.

Despite the clearly illegal nature of plant closing threats, unfair labor practice charges in response to these threats were filed in fewer than one-third of the cases. And for good cause - the NLRB ruled in the union's favor in less than a third of the campaigns where the union did file charges.

Nor were threats to close operations limited to organizing campaigns. Bronfenbrenner's research found that employers threatened to close the plant in 18 percent of first contract campaigns. "The post-election plant closing rate has more than doubled in the years since NAFTA was ratified," she said, adding "NAFTA has both amplified the creditability and effectiveness of the plant closing threat ... and emboldened increasing numbers of employers to act upon that threat."

When combined with other anti-union tactics, plant closing threats are extremely effective in undermining union organizing efforts, and Bronfenbrenner said, "Widespread media coverage of the more than 400,000 jobs lost to NAFTA have reinforced the climate of fear and insecurity."

But unions have won organizing and first contract campaigns in the face of plant closing threats. "They were able to overcome the negative effect of plant closing threats because of the intensity and quality of their organizing campaigns," Bronfenbrenner wrote.

She said the elements of a winning campaign included building an active rank and file committee, the use of volunteer rank and file organizers from already organized facilities, organizing actions such as solidarity days, rallies and community forums and conducting one-on-one surveys with members to determine what they want in a first contract.

According to Bronfenbrenner, where unions run these kinds of campaigns, the win rate in organizing campaigns climbs to 64 percent.

"Unions can only overcome aggressive employer opposition when they utilize a comprehensive union-building strategy involving a significant commitment of staff and financial resources, an emphasis on rank and file leadership development and personal contact, a focus on issues of dignity and justice and the use of escalating internal and external pressure tactics and building for the first contract during the organizing campaign," Bronfenbrenner said in closing.