Professor Barry Eidlin writes in the Washington Post about the undemocratic nature of union representation elections in the United States.
Labour unions in the United States have suffered a series of high-profile defeats in union representation elections in recent years, most recently at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama. While some might think this indicates that workers are not interested in unionizing, available polling data suggests that far more workers want unions than currently have them. The problem, as Assistant Professor Barry Eidlin argues in the Washington Post, is the profoundly broken and undemocratic union election system that currently exists. As he shows, the election system undermines workers’ federally-guaranteed right to join a union, allowing employers to engage in campaigns of threats and intimidation that would not be acceptable in any other electoral system.