Unions can’t organize employees, employers can. An act by the employer that the employees don’t like catalyzes the employees, the union shows up and picks up representation cards. If they can get 30% or more, the NLRB or the state’s labor relations agency orders and election in which 50% plus one of those voting must vote to have the union as their exclusive representative for collective bargaining.

As soon as the Agency certifies the “showing of interest” of 30% or more, the employer will usually challenge the definition of the bargaining unit and the validity of the cards. Are some of the card signers in a different craft? Are some supervisors or temporary employees? And on, and on; there’s a lot of tools in the kit. The employer uses the the legal system to delay the election as long as possible. The catalyzing event recedes in people’s minds, there is employee turnover (sometimes with a little help from the employer), there’s an economic downturn. Over time, the employees lose their ardor for the union and the union loses the election. Or, the union wins the election and the employer does every thing it legally, and sometimes not so legally, can to avoid reaching an agreement during the one year period in which the union is insulated from a challenge to its majority status. After the one year is up, the employer says it has a good faith doubt of majority, the employees have lost interest or have become convinced that the union is impotent, and the organizing drive fades away.

This is really the WalMart bill. WalMart has put most of the legacy, unionized retailers out of business and has “union avoidance” down. HRC’s time on WalMart’s board probably has as much to do with her defeat as anything else. The unions see the “card check” legislation as a way to organize WalMart.

I actually don’t think that WalMart will loose all its weapons to defeat this, may even welcome if not endorse it. Like the automakers and other legacy industries before them, WalMart doesn’t really care what its labor costs are except as they compare to its competitors. They can just pass the labor costs on so long as none of their competitors have a labor cost advantage.

Unlike auto and aerospace, the retailers do not have foreign low-cost competitors except in the ecommerce field. The ecommerce advantage is largely a creature of the tax laws, an advantage easily rectified by a few tweaks in the tax laws. Welcome to France!