7 novembre 2022
Legal Framework of Trade Union
Posted by under: Non classé .
Employers` opposition in the United Kingdom pales in comparison to that of the United States, in part because of the fundamental differences between the Trade Union Recognition Act in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, there is a « hybrid » system of union recognition: employers can recognise the union without majority notification or, if employers refuse voluntary recognition, the Central Arbitration Board (CAC) can recognise the union on the basis of union membership documents or by holding an election. Since the law was introduced a decade ago, the vast majority of new recognition agreements have been the result of voluntary recognitions, and the CAC has held relatively few controversial representative elections. Because of these differences in laws and employer behaviour – a significant proportion of UK employers still work with unions and view bargaining positively – although the level of collective bargaining in the UK has fallen by almost half since the early 1980s, it is still more than twice as high as in the US. How does the U.S. compare to other democracies in terms of recognition and negotiation? First, let`s look at the usual suspects. Collective bargaining in all continental European countries is much higher than in the United States. (I exclude Central and Eastern Europe, which we will discuss shortly.) While the rate of unionization has declined in several European countries, the rate of collective bargaining has remained high and relatively stable. The rate of unionization in Western Europe ranges from less than 10 per cent in France to almost 80 per cent in Sweden; However, collective bargaining is above 80 per cent in all countries except Germany, where it is above 60 per cent. Several factors have contributed to a more favourable environment for collective bargaining: centralised labour market regulation, trade union participation in unemployment insurance in some countries, and legal frameworks favourable to trade unions. Canada`s experience with majority voting is more directly relevant to the current debate in the United States.
The main refrain of employer groups opposed to majority voting is that it would subject workers to coercion and intimidation by unscrupulous union organizers. What does the Canadian experience suggest? By the time the Harris Conservative government abolished majority registration in 1995, this system of union recognition had operated for nearly half a century in Ontario, Canada`s most populous province. But Canada`s leading labour law scholar, Professor Harry Arthurs, recently said he was not aware of a single case in which the employer complained that the union had illegally forced workers to join a union.6 Not a single case in fifty years, compared to more than 20,000 cases of employer coercion per year under the National Labour Relations Act during the of the last two decades. Are EFCA-type provisions discredited in Canada? Opponents of EFCA in the United States have repeatedly pointed out that Canada is a country where legislators now recognize the superiority of mandatory elections as a direct result of their experience with majority voting. Nine out of ten Canadian provinces signed it in the late 1980s, while only four out of ten use it today. Two decades ago, the majority of applications covered more than 90% of Canadian employees; Today, the same regulations cover approximately 40% of the Canadian workforce. But claims that majority voting in Canada has been discredited and replaced by American-style elections are misleading. First, as mentioned earlier, union elections are very different from management-dominated NLRB elections. Second, five Canadian jurisdictions — including large and influential jurisdictions such as the federal courts and Quebec — still have majority registrations. After all, the political situation is far from static, and Canadian laws are far more malleable than their U.S. laws – provinces that have moved from majority registration to elections could always go in the opposite direction. In May 2008, for example, the Ontario legislature considered legislation to reintroduce majority registration.
Thus, majority registration could once again become the norm in Canada. Majoritarian recognition systems based on the American model do not exist in continental Europe. In most continental European countries, aggressive opposition to collective bargaining is relatively rare; As a result, many countries do not have specific legislation on this issue. In some countries, legislative or constitutional provisions relating to freedom of association are interpreted as including bargaining rights, and the national laws of some countries contain a legal obligation to negotiate. In Austria (and Slovenia), for example, compulsory membership of employers` associations leads to a bargaining reach of almost 100%. Even in countries where multi-employer bargaining is voluntary, the government strongly supports collective bargaining without legal support. Under binding extension laws extending collective agreements to non-unionized workers in Germany, France and the Netherlands, the rate of collective bargaining remains high, even though the rate of unionisation has declined. It`s not just the « usual suspects » who have higher trading coverage than the US.
Even in Central and Eastern Europe – where trade unions are weaker and often operate under adverse macroeconomic conditions – coverage is on average significantly higher than in the United States (see Table 1).
Comments are closed.
