It has been over two years since the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) implemented their infamous Quickie or Ambush Election Rules. What is happening? In fiscal year 2017 the NLRB reported 1,854 Representation Certification (RC) election petitions filed. This is 175 RC elections less than the previous year’s number of petitions filed – not what was feared by the management side of labor.

Employers feared that the Quickie Election Rules intended to reduce the time employers could run a counter campaign during a union organizing drive, which would result in union’s winning a higher percentage of elections. Has this been the case? So far apparently not. In fiscal year 2017 the NLRB reports unions won just 940 elections. In fiscal year 2015 unions won 1,120 elections and in 2016 unions won 1,014 elections.

The new rules did effectively reduce the time between filing for an election and holding the election. In 2017 the median time between filing the election petition and holding the representation election fell from an average of 38 days in the years before the Quickie Election rules went into effect to 23 days last fiscal year.

On the other side of the organizing coin, there were 328 petitions to withdraw union recognitions (RD) filed last fiscal year. This is a slightly higher number of petitions than in the previous two years.

Overall the number of union victories and losses remained the same as in previous years.

Employers feared that the shorter election cycle would cut short their ability to make their case to their workers against unionization. If unions still are not winning elections, what does this mean? It may mean just as before the Quickie Election rules, union organizers continue failing to persuade workers about the advantages of being in a union. It could also be concluded that despite labor organizers’ complaints that employers engage in effective but unfair labor practices to fight unionization, shortening the election cycle could curtain that. Perhaps this belief in the employers “secret anti-organizing” practices was never the real cause union membership has fallen and continues to fall as a percentage of the total US workforce.

Another interesting fact is the median size of a bargaining union being organized is just 24 workers. The NLRB reports that the median size of bargaining units for elections has been between 24 and 28 workers since 2008. So when large bargaining units of over 1,000 workers fail to win union representation as we have seen down south in recent years, it takes a huge number of regular elections to “move the dial” to equal just one big organizing win.

Employers that practice simple positive employer-employee relations by listening to employees when they talk about what negatively impacts them at work, training their supervisors to manage properly, avoiding inequitable treatment of workers, and providing fair pay and benefits, will avoid costly organizing drives and the even bigger expense of managing a unionized workforce.

Source: Law360 NLRB Union Election Filings Drop, But Cases Moving Briskly. By Vin Gurrieri (11/17/2017)