Contractual Approaches to Labor Organizing: Supplanting the Election Paradigm?

Abstract

For more than fifty years, elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have functioned as the dominant explanatory structure or paradigm for the free exercise of employee choice under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Since the mid-1990s, however, organized labor has been mounting a serious challenge to the election paradigm as a preferred approach in determining whether employees wish to be represented by a union. A central component of this challenge is unions’ success in negotiating agreements that provide for employers to remain neutral during an upcoming organizing campaign. Most neutrality agreements specify that the employer will recognize the union and participate in collective bargaining if a majority of its employees sign valid authorization cards.