A new five-year study reveals that private sector employer opposition to the efforts of American workers to form unions has intensified and become more punitive in recent years.
Conducted by highly-regarded labor expert and Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, the study concludes that employers are using much more aggressive tactics -- including threats of firing, actual firings, interrogation and plant-closing threats -- in their campaigns to thwart workers' organizing efforts. The anti-union tactics used today, compared to those of 20 years ago, include more coercive and punitive tactics designed to intensely monitor and punish union activity.
A 2007 study by Richard B. Freeman of Harvard University, cited by Bronfenbrenner, found that if all workers who wanted a union were given the opportunity to have union representation, the percentage of union-represented workers in the U.S. would be 58 percent. Instead, only 12.4 percent are represented by unions. Bronfenbrenner's study illuminates the reasons why, including the heavy-handed employer anti-unionism and the failures of current labor law, and a largely toothless National Labor Relations Board, to protect workers' rights to democratically choose unionism.
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