Global Bargaining Rights Study: United States Lags Behind Other Developed Countries

"In no other developed country do employers routinely fight to the death efforts by their employees to form a union."

That's the finding of Dr. John Logan, a professor at the London School of Economics and an expert on union organizing issues, in a new paper titled "Unions Facing Hard Times: The Global Crisis in Union Collective Bargaining."

Dr. Logan in his report finds that collective bargaining coverage remains well over 80 percent in many western European countries (Sweden, France, Italy) and over 60 percent in Germany and 30 percent in Canada. He points to dramatic increases in collective bargaining density in South Africa, Brazil, Korea and Taiwan fueled by grassroots political movements which have demanded changes in the government.

Dr. Logan contrasts this to the situation in the United States. "The United States is out of step with most of the developed world when it comes to collective bargaining coverage." Private sector collective bargaining coverage is now at 7.5 percent in the U.S., its lowest level in a century.

Dr. Logan explains that the United States is "unique, in having a system of union recognition that encourages employers to fight to the death attempts by their workers to choose a union." He uses the on-going anti-union campaign conducted by Verizon to prevent 30,000 Verizon Wireless and 5,000 Verizon Business workers from joining CWA to highlight the intensity of employer opposition in the United States and the abject failure of American labor law to protect workers' right to organize and bargain collectively.

Dr. Logan states, "The tactics used by Verizon are those employed in practically every aggressive anti-union campaign in the United States: captive audience group anti-union meetings, one on one anti-union meetings between workers and their supervisors (who can be fired for refusing to participate in anti-union campaigns), the exploitation of management's exclusive control of the workplace to coerce and intimidate employees, and the use of highly sophisticated union avoidance consultants who orchestrate employer campaigns from behind the scenes."

The effect on U.S. workers and the economy he describes as "profound":

• In 2005, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of the national income.
• Americans are working longer hours, with less economic security and fewer benefits than in other developed nations.
• The bottom 50 percent earned only 12.8 percent of all income.
• From 2000 to 2004, median income fell 2 percent to $30,881.
• In 2000, 21.9 percent of American children lived in poverty, compared with 2.8 percent in Finland and 2.4 percent in Denmark.

But Dr. Logan explains that this is not only a problem for the United States. "The regressive nature of American labor policy is not only a problem for workers in the United States. There is growing evidence that the weakness of American law, which gives free rein to anti-union employers, is emboldening union avoidance consultants, employer groups and multinational corporations to export U.S.-originated anti-union strategies to other parts of the world. If the sustained assault on American unions continues, it will likely have escalating negative consequences for workers in other nations.

"Multinational corporations attempt to play workers in different nations against each other, but it is increasingly evident that what hurts American workers, sooner or later, hurts workers throughout the world. And what helps American workers — stronger protections for the right to organize and bargain collectively through the Employee Free Choice Act — will help in other countries. If unions are to stop the international onslaught of anti-unionism, they must reverse the trend towards a union free environment in the United States."