‘Neutrality agreements’ have been used by American unions since the 1970s as a means of improving the probability of union organizing success. These are privately bargained contracts that define the parameters for organizing campaigns. They include things like a requirement for the employer to remain ‘neutral’ (to not bad-mouth the union or unionization), to permit union organizers onto company property to speak to workers, to provide the union with a list of employee names (and maybe home addresses), and to voluntarily recognize the union if the union can prove it has majority support among the employees. Often, this test of support is by way of a ‘card-check’, which requires the union to collect membership cards on behalf of a majority of employees in the bargaining unit.
The recent deal between the CAW and Magna (the “Framework of Fairness”) is an example, as is the recent (and short-lived) arrangement between the Steelworkers and Dofasco. Neutrality agreements have become relevant in Canada since the 1990s as governments moved from statutory card-check union certification models to mandatory vote models.
From a legal perspective, these agreements raise a bunch of interesting issues. For example, by giving the CAW a litany of organizing rights (access to the factories, the right to hold union meetings during working hours, the endorsement of the company, etc), has Magna given the CAW illegal “support”, as prohibited by Section 70 of the Ontario Labour Relations Act?
No doubt, some of the various legal issues neutrality agreements raise will one day need to be resolved in litigation, especially if these agreements become more common in Canada. I published a piece a few years back exploring some of them in detail. But for those of you who have better things to do than read long-winded legal treatments of obscure issues, here is a shorter survey of the issues from a paper I presented recently at a conference.
