Michigan Labor & Employment Law Blog
In what will seem to be a shock to anybody reading this blog, because it is, unions won 72 percent of every National Labor Relations Board election held against a non-union employer in 2016. This is the highest rate in history. In fact, in bargaining units with a smaller number of employees, i.e. employees less than 50 in number, the unions won 74 percent of all their elections. While unions have won more than 60 percent of all NLRB elections in the last 12 years, this is a real stunner.
Most educated employers realize that the last eight years of the Obama administration have been very anti-employer. But even to an experienced 45 year labor practitioner such as this author, a 74 percent win rate is incredible.
What this means for the average company with less than 50 employees (and the Dunlop Commission in the mid-‘90s claim that almost 85 percent of all employers in the United States have less than five employees, let alone 50), a union may be in your future. To avoid such a catastrophe, it would make sense for you to sit down with a management and/or labor attorney sooner rather than later and do an internal audit or checkup to see if your company is vulnerable for unionization.
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