Big Labor-Funded Study to Promote Coercive “Top Down” Organizing is Debunked by Research Institute
### Study prepared for union front group uses twisted facts and logic to dupe media and promote anti-worker legislation designed to stifle worker choice
Washington, DC. (January 6, 2006) – The National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) has just released a paper that exposes a dishonest research study prepared for the union front group “American Rights at Work†(ARAW) as the product of “academic apologists for top-down organizing†who
“ignore basic facts†and rely on “twisted logic†to promote its lobbying agenda.
The NILRR paper refutes basic claims made by the union-funded study that has since been held up by
union political operatives as justification for legislation designed to give union officials more special legal
privileges to corral workers into union dues-paying ranks.
Big Labor lobbyists are currently pushing the ironically named “Employee Free Choice Act†[H.R.
1696/S. 842] that would further undermine workers’ ability to decide freely whether or not to unionize. The
bill would effectively eliminate less abusive secret ballot elections in favor of in-your-face “card checkâ€
campaigns in which union operatives bully workers into signing cards that are then counted as “votes†for
unionization.
According to the NILRR analysis, among many problems with the Big Labor study is the fact that its
authors, one of whom is a former union staffer, believe that employers who simply choose to inform workers
about the downsides of unionization are improperly interfering with workers’ rights. This assertion is
despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of employees believe that employers should be able to
provide workers with information about unions and the potential impact of unionization.
The NILRR paper also refutes Big Labor’s ubiquitous claim that 30% of employers fire workers
“when they engaged in union activities.†The inflated number lacks all credibility because it relies on the self
interested, uncorroborated claims of union organizers, and fails to distinguish legal firings of employees
who happen to be engaging in union activities from illegal firings of workers in retaliation for organizing.
After examining statistics on NLRB charges and their likeliness to settle, it is clear that the number of illegal
firings is a small fraction of the 30% number that appears in the union study.
“This dishonest research sharply undercuts any credibility that ARAW may have, and it shows the
lengths to which Big Labor is willing to go in order to force workers into unions,†said Stan Greer, senior
research director for the National Institute for Labor Relations Research. “It is all too common for Big Labor
to bankroll pseudo-academic studies that disregard even basic fact and reason as they attempt to dupe the
media, the public, and lawmakers.â€