CEMEX UPDATE WEBINAR RECORDING AND SLIDES NOW AVAILABLE: LRI INK

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Subject: CEMEX UPDATE WEBINAR RECORDING AND SLIDES NOW AVAILABLE: LRI INK

September 7, 2023

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CEMEX UPDATE WEBINAR RECORDING AND SLIDES NOW AVAILABLE

by Michael VanDervort

If you would like to view the LRI Cemex Update webinar given by Phil Wilson, you can request access to the slide deck and video recording by completing this form. We will need your name, a contact number, and your work email address in order to verify you are with a company.

Please note: This webinar is for management-side labor and employee relations professionals only (no media or union-side representatives).

Mastering the Cemex Maze: A Strategic Map for Employers

by Michael VanDervort

Key Takeaways

The Cemex decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has fundamentally altered the labor relations landscape in the United States.

Joy Silk?: Although the NLRB did not revert to the Joy Silk framework, it did plant a mine field in the path of employers facing union organizing drives, and a misstep could incur a bargaining order. The key phrase from the majority opinion:

“… if the employer commits an unfair labor practice that requires setting aside the election, the petition (whether filed by the employer or the union) will be dismissed, and the employer will be subject to a remedial bargaining order.”

Introduction of RM Petition: Employers are now required to either immediately recognize a union or promptly file an RM petition to conduct an election.

Bottom line, you can still campaign, but you must tread lightly. If you are found to have committed unfair labor practices, the Board can dismiss your election request (or set aside the election outcome and order you to recognize the union and begin bargaining.

This means employers will need to adapt to these seismic shifts by focusing on conducting effective and legal campaigns, and left of boom efforts including proactive management training, positive employee relations, and legal preparedness.

Click here for Phil Wilson’s full take on the Cemex decision.

Unanswered Questions

Timing for RM Petition: While suggesting a 14-day period in a footnote in Cemex, the Board has not fully clarified how quickly an employer must file an RM petition and when exactly the clock starts ticking for this. This leaves room for potential legal disputes.
Scope of Unfair Labor Practices (ULP): The criteria for issuing a bargaining order based on ULPs committed by the employer are not fully defined, leading to potential legal challenges.
Unit Definition: It's unclear how the bargaining unit will be defined if the employer files an RM petition, which could lead to disagreements between the union and the employer.

Proactive Responses by Employers: Left of Boom Activities

Considering the Cemex decision and its implications, employers should focus immediately on "Left of Boom" activities. These are proactive measures aimed at preventing a situation where a union gains enough support among employees to even initiate the process for recognition.

Positive Employee Relationships (PER) Training

Focus: Building positive relationships among employees and between employees and management.
Content: Company culture, fair treatment, benefits of employment, and conflict resolution.
Timing: Integrated into the hiring process, continued in new hire orientation, and updated for existing employees.

Union Education

What is a Union: Dispelling myths and misconceptions.
NLRA Rights: Rights and responsibilities under the National Labor Relations Act.
Value of your Signature: Importance of understanding union authorization cards and what signing one means.

Leadership Training for Managers

Content: Approachability, union education, and NLRA Do's and Don'ts.

Notification: Managers should notify top management if a union requests recognition.
Frequency: Updated at least annually.

"Always On" Vulnerability Assessment

Purpose: Identify and address issues before they escalate.
Skip-Step Opportunities: Alternative channels for employees to report issues.

Card-Signing Playbook

Readiness: “What does signing a card mean?” - Updated and ready to deploy at the first signs of organizing.
Lawful Opinion: Prepared to lawfully express views on unionization.

Bargaining Units and RM Petitions

Advance Planning: Think about potential bargaining units in advance.

Legal and Consulting Team

Preparation: Identified and working on response plans.

External Communication Strategy

Social Media: Pre-approved external communications.
Internal and External Communications: ready to deploy.

Tabletop Exercise

Response Plan: Test your current response plan with a tabletop deployment simulation.

Conclusion

Employers should focus on building strong relationships with their employees as a preventive measure against unionization. With the new rules in place, the time to act is now, and preparedness is key. We can help. Call us anytime at 800-888-9115.

Shawn Fain: One Damn Lucky Cog

by Nancy Jowske

For most of labor union history, the surest route to becoming a union president was to be born the son of one. Some less endowed aspirants, like current Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, got there through a life of expert politicking, winning elections, doling out favors, and building their brand. Very few union leaders have taken the high road like Walter Reuther did. Reuther, the man who built the UAW, dedicated and risked his life to improve the lives of others through the now-lost art of organizing.

And then there are the cogs. Every union machine has dozens of them. These are the Assistant to the Assistant Regional Managers of the labor movement. They are the faithful yes-people who keep their mouths shut and their heads down while building a career out of assisting administrations in looking good. A few cogs cap their careers by gliding into a presidential vacancy, installed into office because they do what’s expected of them and know where all the bodies are buried. SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry is just such a former cog, as are most of today’s top union officials.

Newly elected UAW President Shawn Fain is one damn lucky cog.

In the UAW’s runoff election this spring, held after the machine weeded out all the riffraff, Fain won by just a few hundred votes -- out of one million ballots mailed -- over the appointed president and former cog Ray Curry. Let that sink in. Fain wasn’t swept into office by any rank-and-file mandate, and he certainly wasn’t the first choice of autoworkers. Fain won because, one, he wasn’t Ray Curry; two, voting retirees bought into his ludicrous promise to restore their pre-Obama health care plan; and three, Fain presented himself as just a humble union rep and Chrysler electrician from Kokomo.

Listening to Fain now, one might think he’s been in a coma since 1999 and woke up to a UAW in dire need of a nerdy messiah last fall. In fact, for nearly a decade, Fain had a C-suite view (as did Curry) of the once mighty UAW staggering around like a drunk monkey, hemorrhaging members, money, political clout, and bargaining power. And while never implicated in any wrongdoing, for much of his time assisting the administrators of what the Department of Justice called a “culture of corruption,” Fain was involved with the Solantis joint training program that served as the funnel for payola.

Fain might have been many things during his rise to the top, but reformer wasn’t one of them. A true reformer that high up the food chain would have warned the members about the stench in Solidarity House long before the FBI did. But there’s an unwritten rule in big labor – you never rat on the machine, lest you “hurt the cause,” members' welfare be damned.

Shawn Fain is going to need more than luck in the coming weeks. A ten-day strike against the Big Three could steer Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana into a recession and drag the rest of our tenuous economy down. And the man steering our fate through these treacherous waters has again resorted tobrandishing a wastebasket during a Facebook live stream to appear leaderlike. Here’s hoping he figures out how to think like a real leader soon.

Blog Post

An Offer That Shawn Fain Hopes The Big Three Automakers Can’t Refuse

by Kimberly Ricci

UAW President Shawn Fain, that lucky cog, is still waving his “audacious” contract demands for 150,000 UAW members who authorized strikes at Ford, GM, and Stellantis. We recently updated this situation in light of the industry’s EV dilemma and Fain’s theatrics, which include tossing a Stellantis offer in the trash on Facebook Live. That performative stance continues.

Big Three contracts expire on September 14. Let’s check in on how this combative union official spent the past week:

Labor Day: You’d better believe that Fain strutted his stuff at a parade in Detroit. He declared that no concessions would be made on demands for 46% pay hikes and 32-hour work weeks for the price of 40 hours. He insisted that this will happen “by any means necessary.”

One automaker’s move: Ford recently offered a “generous” contract that includes a 9% wage boost through 2027. Granted, this is nowhere near what the UAW wants with wages, but the offer meets other demands. Job tiers would be eliminated, and temp employees would receive 20% raises. Full-time Ford workers would earn between $92,000 to $98,000 and receive around $12,000 in COLA benefits over the life of the contract.

Get The Trash Can Out Again: Predictably, Fain declared that Ford’s offer “insults our very worth.” He bemoaned Ford’s refusal of the 32-hour work week, and he is “fed up and tired of the bullsh*t that the Big Three continue to peddle.” The union reportedly made a counterproposal with details still pending.

Offers In The Wild: Stellantis aims to present another offer by week’s end. Fain also indicated that he expects a GM proposal any day now. However, the UAW already filed ULP charges against both Stellantis and GM for allegedly not bargaining in good faith. The NLRB will investigate.

More Automaker Responses: GM and Stellantis refuted Fain’s allegations with the Stellantis adding that “nearly 1,000 UAW demands” have been a nightmare. Ford stressed that it will not make concessions that would “mortgage our future” and harm UAW members, too.

Meanwhile, a former AFL-CIO director alleges that Stellantis’ 2022 idling of the Belvedere plant is part of a long-game plan to undermine UAW power by outsourcing production to Mexico. This allegation could, perhaps, be used as a bargaining chip by either or both sides.

If A Deal Doesn’t Come Through: The Anderson Economic Group believes that a 2023 strike could cost the Big Three a combined “$989 million in earnings” in 10 days. In 2019, GM took a $3.6 billion hit for a 40-day strike. The UAW has their $825 million strike fund ready.

The “most pro-union” U.S. president weighs in: Joe Biden is “not worried” about a strike, which he believes will not happen. Fain responded with “shock” and reminded Biden that a 2024 endorsement will have to be “earned.” Fain added that a strike would “send a message” to Biden, so these two are only making automakers’ woes more uncomfortable while the clock keeps ticking.

Blog Post

Gen Z Loves Unions, But Do They Understand Them?

by Kimberly Ricci

We previously detailed how unions target Gen Z within the rising trend of organizing at progressive companies by Workers United. Old-school unions like the UAW also target younger-skewing higher education workers to shore up flagging membership.

Marketplace recently analyzed the grim financial data that often explains why younger workers turn to third-party representation. Likewise, the BBC concluded that Gen Z has “about 86% less buying power than Baby Boomers did at the same age.” It’s no wonder that their ears are open to flashy union rhetoric. They also have yet to discover the crushing disappointment of a sellout deal or realize the lack of meaningful results that a union can bring even when corruption isn’t present.

This age group, born after 1997, hasn’t yet experienced those downsides of union membership, but they do grasp their own economic frustration. They realize that their Millennial parents struggled during the Great Recession, have been criticized for not buying diamonds, and are overall financially worse off than Baby Boomers. Gen Z has similarly faced criticism for not taking part in the American rite of home ownership and for allegedly pioneering the decline of birth rates.

Yet for Gen Z, it’s not clear where that money, for houses and children, will come from. These workers tend to be more educated than their parents and grandparents, yet many young adults have mortgaged their lives to student loans, not home ownership. They were also told to “learn to code” and fell prey to mass layoffs of software engineers. They felt the double whammy of a pandemic recession and inflation.

What we do know for sure is this: Union density sits at an all-time low, but union petitions are up, and recent NLRB decisions will make it easier for workers to unionize. However, other associated statistics are contradictory.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2022 figures confirmed that only 10% of workers belong to unions. Yet an AFL-CIO poll finds that 88% of Americans under 30 “support” unions’ existence. A Center For American Progress poll further reported that workers who straight-up call themselves “pro-union” skew by age. Gen Z slid in with 64.3% as the “most pro-union generation alive” with Millennials at 60.5% and Baby Boomers at 57.2%

Then there’s the BLS report that aimed to prove that union workers are better off – by hundreds of dollars per week – than non-union counterparts. Yet the data crumbles because no “apple-to-apples” comparison feasibly exists. For example, older workers will generally have higher wages due to experience or industry, not union membership. The data shows that workers younger than 25 can benefit from union wages, but with age, that gap closes to $28. That small sum evaporates into dues, and unions profit.

Does Gen Z understand unions? Currently, no, but they’re looking for some solution. They will someday learn the truth about third-party representation, because these things are cyclical. More Starbucks decertification petitions might move that cycle along, and unions will break promises to workers, as they always do.

Blog Post

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Union Bailout

NLRB Board Member's Term Expires

Link

U.S. Senate confirms Biden nominee for second term on labor board

Link

NLRB adopts higher bar for workplace changes when union contracts lapse

Link

NLRB restores broader test for determining when labor law protects workers

Link

NLRB General Counsel's 'Captive Audience' Memo Passes Legal Test

Link

NLRB says labor law protects worker advocacy for non-employees

Link

Time for Big Labor to Start Playing by Same Rules as Rest of Us

Link

Board Restores Protections for Employees Who Advocate for Nonemployees

Link

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About Labor Relations INK

Labor Relations INK is published weekly and is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up by visiting here.

If you use content from this newsletter, please attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and include our website: http://www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger, Michael VanDervort, Nancy Jowske and Kimberly Ricci

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About Labor Relations Institute

LRI exists to help our clients thrive and become extraordinary workplaces. We improve the lives of working people by strengthening relationships with their leaders and each other. For over 41 years, LRI has led the labor and employee relations industry, driven by our core values and our proven process, the LRI Way.

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Subject: CEMEX UPDATE WEBINAR RECORDING AND SLIDES NOW AVAILABLE: LRI INK