by Michael Mauer

Particularly for private sector workers, both the legal and political obstacles to forming a union have become quite formidable in recent years. As a result, unions increasingly seek to bypass the process set out in labor law for filing for an election with the appropriate government agency. Instead, the strategy is to go back to what workers did before the 1934 Wagner Act established a framework for union organizing, and to wage a purely political fight to achieve union recognition directly from the employer.

These alternative paths to unionization usually include an effort to win the employer’s agreement (1) to voluntarily recognize the union, once the union obtains a majority of signatures, or (2) to respect the results of an election conducted by a neutral party, such as the American Arbitration Association. But the political and practical difficulties when going that uncharted route are formidable, to say the least. And so as a result, it is still the case that almost all union organizing in the United States takes place within the framework provided by a statute.

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