IV.THE CLEARINING OF THE PERFECT STORM:WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR DEFINED BENEFIT PENSION PLANS?

Discussion

Andrew S. Levin
AFL-CIO

    Let me begin by congratulating Wilma Liebman for assembling this program about a matter of great concern to us all„the future of worker representation procedures in the United States. She chose the presentations carefully; they truly represent the best and most important work in this area. I will comment briefly on each. I also commend Chuck Cohen for his thoughtful remarks, which got straight to some of the most sensitive questions raised by today's presentations.
    First, let me say that workers have come to see the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation election process as a death trap for organizing a union. A mechanism designed to facilitate worker organizing„ and which, in its early years did just that, providing millions of workers with the route to self-organization„today stands as a frightening and often permanent detour for employees seeking a way to come together for a voice at work. Indeed, our own research shows that in recent years, private-sector workers have been abandoning NLRB elections in droves. Today, a sizeable majority of covered employees who organize successfully do so through voluntary recognition agreements with their employers.
    As Jim Brudney pointed out in his excellent presentation, it has always been legal for employers to recognize their employees voluntarily. Indeed, in the early years of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), majority sign-up based on a count of authorization cards was the principal method the government used to certify unions. And when Congress, under pressure from employers to slow worker organizing, passed the Taft-Hartley Amendments over President Truman's veto in 1947, its leaders explicitly considered and rejected the idea of making voluntary recognition illegal.
    Thus, voluntary recognition has been an option for the entire seventy-year history of the NLRA, without interruption. I would suggest it is coming into a sort of renaissance because, as the presidential Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations pointed out a decade ago, the NLRA election process is so rife with conflict and delay that it poisons the atmosphere for constructive labor relations. Employers and unions seeking innovative and mutually respectful avenues to mediate worker desires have little choice but to strike out on their own and hammer out mutually acceptable arrangements, in the age-old tradition of the American marketplace.
    As we saw from today's presentations, that is just what they are doing. What I found most interesting about Stephanie Sloggett-O'Dell and Larry Fox's powerful and candid analysis of the partnership between Tenet Health-care Corporation and SEIU was the extent to which each partner made major concessions to achieve a system in which Tenet workers can organize in peace, without pressure or coercion from any side. Thus, far from representing a situation in which the employer was hoodwinked or battered into "allowing the union in without worker say-so," the reality Stephanie and Larry presented was one in which the union gave up major geographic targets and important organizing tactics, while the employer agreed not to run an antiunion campaign against its workers. Both sides agreed to master contract terms that afforded employees favorable wages and working conditions, and both sought to maximize the company's position in the healthcare marketplace (and thus the job prospects of employees). The ultimate result was freedom for Tenet workers to decide on unionization with full information but no tension or fear. Union membership rose, but it did not become universal, as would seem likely if the idea voluntary recognition agreements as "letting the union in without worker say-so" bore a stronger relationship to reality.
    The Tenet story also made clear that we have very little information about such arrangements. Many people who attended this session were on the edges of their seats precisely because voluntary recognition agreements are so little understood and discussed that the opportunity to hear a high-level executive of a large corporation discuss one seemed like a rare treat. We must rectify this situation. We need much more empirical research on all aspects of voluntary recognition agreements.
    That is why I was so interested in Adrienne Eaton and Jill Kriesky's presentation of their current work. Although they had few results to share because field research was still underway at the time of our session, their attempt to get to the bottom of questions about how much information workers have and how much pressure they feel in NLRB elections and majority sign-up situations is very important. Their basic methodological framework of comparing the answers of random samples of workers who went through NLRB elections and majority sign-up procedures seems solid. I await the results with great interest.
    Finally, let me comment briefly on Jim Brudney's paper. Simply put, I believe it will be considered the most important piece of work on voluntary recognition agreements of this period. Using Thomas Kuhn's seminal work in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions seemed to me an ideal way to discuss the paradigm of forced NLRB elections as the "crown jewel" and "gold standard" of worker representation procedures in this country. Much work remains to be done to demonstrate in full detail why NLRB elections fail the basic test of democratic practice. But Jim has done as fine a job as anyone could in demonstrating how we tenaciously hold onto that paradigm„long after the procedures it represents have died as a meaningful vehicle for worker self-organization.