Union ‘Neutrality’ Agreements Aren’t Neutral for Tennessee
Action needed from General Assembly to protect Tennessee’s workers, shield the state
When Tennessee lawmakers approved $900 million in state incentives for Ford Motor Company, they knew the car maker could bring 5,800 new jobs to West Tennessee. But they probably didn’t know Ford could also bring its “neutrality agreement” with United Auto Workers.
The innocuous term is misleading. Because of the agreement, the union will be able to organize Ford’s Haywood County electric truck and battery facility more easily and unfortunately at the expense of employees.
First, the agreement will deny workers the right to a secret ballot union election. United Auto Workers can instead organize the facility by what’s known as card check, a petition process that invites worker intimidation and deception. Card check is unpopular, with a recent Engine Insights poll showing that Tennesseans prefer having a secret ballot in union selections by a six-to-one margin.
Yet Ford’s agreement will deny workers their right to weigh the pros and cons of union representation in private. They’ll be forced to sit through United Auto Worker sales pitches and have union organizers pursue them during work breaks.
Workers will also forfeit their privacy. The neutrality agreement requires Ford to provide workers’ names and home addresses to the union upon request. Polling shows that handing private information over to third parties is also unpopular, with 64% of Tennesseans disapproving of such a policy.
In short, organizers will target and pester workers until they sign a card saying they want representation. All they may really want is for union representatives to leave them alone.
Once enough workers sign cards, United Auto Workers will achieve a monopoly. That means that, with no election whatsoever, workers will find the union representing them. Even those who don’t want union representation will be stuck under the United Auto Workers’ contract.
This isn’t just a worry for future Ford employees. It is also a major concern for existing businesses, as well as for businesses looking to relocate to Tennessee. United Auto Workers has been trying to get a foothold in the South for years, and now Ford could be just the beginning.
Companies looking to protect their employees may soon discover that it’s not simple. They may even become the target of union attacks.
For example, United Auto Workers uses a tactic called a corporate campaign, where it strong arms companies into signing neutrality agreements. Corporate campaigns try to drive customers away from a company by harming the employer’s reputation.
To accomplish this, unions may solicit politicians to disparage companies they target. During United Auto Workers’ campaign to organize Nissan, for instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) publicly shamed the company, calling it a “greedy corporation” that “threaten[s] the local community” and makes “obscene profits.”
Around the same time, United Auto Workers staged protests at 75 American Hyundai dealerships. The protests were reportedly in response to a harassment claim, but there was a catch. The person accused of harassment was not a Hyundai employee but a subcontractor, working not in the United States but in South Korea.
Why would the union protest U.S. dealerships for the actions of someone half a world away who was not even a company employee? Likely because they were advancing a corporate campaign, applying pressure in hopes that Hyundai would abandon secret-ballot elections for its employees.
There is a solution, a way for Tennessee to protect future workers and deter corporate campaigns against job creators. The state could enact a secret ballot protection act or, as recent legislation has already suggested, require companies that get state tax incentives to pledge to protect their employees’ rights.
The challenges hidden in Ford’s neutrality agreement may be a foregone conclusion. But decisive legislative action can protect other Tennessee workers and job creators and shield the state from similar entanglements in the future.
F. Vincent Vernuccio is a senior labor policy adviser for Workers for Opportunity and president of the Institute for the American Worker.