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Economists Support Move to Card-Check Union Certification in U.S.

by David Doorey March 3, 2009
written by David Doorey March 3, 2009

The Wall Street Journal has a story reporting on a letter sent to Congress by three dozen economists, including two nobel prize winners, arguing in favour of the Employee Free Choice Act.  As we have noted several times here, that legislation would, among other things, allow unions to be certified by a card-check rather than a mandatory ballot.  Here’s the letter, with a list of signatories.
The economists share President Obama’s opinion that a health economy and strong America requires a strong middle class, which does not at all exist right now.  Building up the labor movement is seen as a way to stem the tide of the growing income disparity in the U.S., which many economists, political scientists, and labor experts argue is due in large part to many years of deregulation and weak labor laws.   The Journal story refers to one economist who argues that a 3 percent increase in unionization will lead to a 1 percent decline in employment.  She apparently based that opinion on a study of Canadian laws!  I’m not aware of that study, and given how often American scholars misinterpret Canadian labour laws and studies of it, I am suspicious of her description of it.  There are so many variables involved, I have doubts that the mere fact of unionization can be shown to cause unemployment?  For example, sometimes workers join unions because they fear downsizing is coming and they want some voice in the process.   When the downsizing then occurs, is it the result of unionization?  Of course not.  You would have to read the study carefully to see what was measured.
Any of you industrial relations scholars out there know what study she is referring to?

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David Doorey

Professor Doorey is an Associate Professor of Work Law and Industrial Relations at York University. He is the Director of the School of HRM at York and Director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s executive LLM Program in Labour and Employment Law and on the Advisory Board of the Osgoode Certificate program in Labour Law. He is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program and a member of the International Advisory Committee on Harvard University’s Clean Slate Project, which is re-imaging labor law for the 21st century

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Here's my latest in @jacobinmag.

If Ontario's labor laws applied in Alabama, the Amazon vote would have been held months ago so workers could get back to their jobs. Instead, the NLRA permits Amazon to conduct a months' long onslaught of anti-union propaganda. https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1364613560425275392

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Amazon workers in Alabama are voting on whether to unionize, but the company is bombarding them with anti-union propaganda. In Canada, by contrast, votes are held quickly, making it harder for companies to stack the deck — a model that can work in the US. http://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/amazon-alabama-canada-labor-law-union-vote

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