Know Your Rights

As an employee who may be considering Union Representation at your workplace or if you are currently a Union Member you should know your rights.

The following, which is adapted from a booklet published by the National Labor Relations Board, is a brief outline of some of those rights.

It was in the national interest of the United States to maintain full production in its economy and to provide a peaceful means to resolve industrial strife among employees, employers, and labor organizations. Experience has shown that labor disputes can be lessened if the parties involved recognize the legitimate rights of each in their relations with one another to establish these rights under law. Over sixty (60) years ago Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act. Its purpose is to define and protect the rights of employees, employers, to encourage Collective Bargaining and to eliminate certain practices on the part of Labor and management that are harmful to the general welfare.

A Guide to Basic Law and Procedures under the National Labor Relations Act

Summary of the Act

What the Act Provides
The National Labor Relations Act states and defines rights of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with their employer through representatives of their own choosing or not to do so. To ensure that employees can freely choose their own representatives for the purpose of collective bargaining, or choose not to be represented, the Act establishes a procedure by which they can exercise their choice at a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. Further, to protect the rights of employees and employers, and to prevent labor disputes that would adversely affect the rights of the public, Congress has defined certain acts as unfair labor practices.

How the Act is Enforced
The law is administered and enforced principally by the National Labor Relations Board and the General Counsel acting through 52 regional and other field offices located in major cities in various sections of the country. The General Counsel and the staff of the Regional Offices investigate and prosecute unfair labor practice cases and conduct elections to determine employee representatives. The five-member board decides cases involving charges of unfair labor practices and determines representation election questions that come to it from the Regional Offices.

The Rights of Employees

The Section 7 Rights
The rights of employees are set forth principally in Section 7 of the Act, which provides as follows:

Section 7. Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3).

Examples of the rights protected by this section are the following:

Forming or attempting to form a union among the employees of a company.

Joining a union whether the union is recognized by the employer or not.

Assisting a union to organize the employees of an employer.

Union Security
The Act permits, under certain conditions, a union and an employer to make an agreement, called a union-security agreement, that requires employees to make certain payments to the union in order to retain their jobs. A union-security agreement cannot require that applicants for employment be members of the Union in order to be hired and such an agreement cannot require employees to join or maintain membership in the union in order to retain their jobs. Under a union-security agreement, individuals choosing to be dues-paying nonmembers may be required, as may employees who actually join the union, to pay dues within a certain period of time (a "grace period") after the collective bargaining contract takes effect or after a new employee is hired. However, the most that can be required of nonmembers who inform the union that they object to the use of their payments for non-representational purposes is that they pay their share of the union's cost to representational activities (such as collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment).

Union-Security Agreements
The grace period, after which the union-security agreement becomes effective, cannot be less than 30 days except in the building and construction industry.

Requirements for Union-Security Agreements
For a union-security agreement to be valid, it must meet all the following requirements:

The union must not have been assisted or controlled by the employer (see Section 8(a)(2) under "Unfair Labor Practices of Employers" on pp.19-20.
The union must be the majority representative of the employees in the appropriate collective bargaining unit covered by such agreement when made.
The union's authority to make such an agreement must not have been revoked within the previous 12 months by the employees in a Board election.
The agreement must provide for the appropriate grace period.

Pre-Hire Agreements in the Construction Industry
Section 8(f) of the Act allows an employer engaged primarily in the building and construction industry to sign a union-security agreement with a Union without the union's having been designated, as the representative of its employees as otherwise required by the Act. The agreement can be made before the employer has hired any employees for a project and will apply to them when they are hired. As noted above, however, the union-security provisions of a collective-bargaining contract in the building and construction industry may become effective with respect to new employees after 7 full days. If the agreement is made while employees are on the job, it must allow existing employees the same 7-day grace period to comply. As with any other union-security agreement, the union involved must be free from employer assistance or control.

Collective-bargaining contracts in the building and construction industry can include, as stated in Section 8(f) the following additional provisions:

A requirement that the employer notify the union concerning job openings.
A provision that gives the union an opportunity to refer qualified applicants for jobs.
Job qualification standards based on training or experience.
A provision four priority in hiring based on length of service with the employer, the industry, or in the particular geographic area.

These four hiring provisions may lawfully be included in collective bargaining contracts, which cover employees in other industries as well.

Unfair Labor Practices of Employers
The unfair labor practices of employers are listed in Section 8(a) of the National Labor Relations Act.

Section 8(a)(1)-Interference with Section 7 rights
Section 8(a)(1) forbids an employer "to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7." Any prohibited interference by an employer with the rights of employees to organize, to form, join, or assist a labor organization, to bargain collectively, to engage in other concerted activities for mutual aid or protection, or to refrain from any or all of these activities, constitutes a violation of this section. This is a broad prohibition on employer interference, and an employer violates this section whenever it commits any of the other employer unfair labor practices.
Employer conduct may, of course, independently violate Section 8(a)(1). Examples of such independent violations are:

Threatening employees with loss of jobs or benefits if they should join or vote for a union.
Threatening to close down the plant if a union should be organized in it.
Questioning employees about their union activities or membership in such circumstances as will tend to restrain or coerce the employees.
Spying on union gatherings, or pretending to spy.
Granting wage increases deliberately time to discourage employees from forming or joining a union.

Domination or Illegal Assistance and Support of a Labor Organization
Section 8(a)(2) makes it unlawful for an employer to "dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any labor organization or contribute financial or other support to it". This section not only outlaws "company unions" that are dominated by the employer, but also forbids an employer to contribute money to a union it favors or to give a union improper advantages that are denied to rival unions.

An employer violates Section 8(a)(2) by:

Taking an active part in organizing a union or committee to represent employees.
Bringing pressure on employees to support a union financially, except in the enforcement of a lawful union-security agreement.
Allowing one of several unions, competing to represent employees, to solicit on company premises during working hours while denying other unions the same privilege.

Section 8(a)(3) Discrimination Against Employees
Section 8(a)(3) makes it an unfair labor practice for an employer to discriminate against employees "in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment" for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging membership in a labor organization.

In general, the Act makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate in employment because of an employee's union or other group activity within the protection of the Act. Discrimination within the meaning of the Act would include such action as refusing to hire, discharging, demoting, assigning to a less desirable shift or job, or withholding benefits.

The Union-Security Exception to Section 8(a)(3)
As previously noted, Section 8(a)(3) provides that an employee may be discharged for failing to make certain lawfully required payments to the exclusive bargaining representative under a lawful union-security agreement.

The Act Does Not Limit Employer's Right to Discharge for Economic Reasons
This section does not limit an employer's right to discharge, transfer, or lay off an employee for genuine economic reasons or for such good cause as disobedience or bad work. This right applies equally to employees who are active in support of a union and to those who are not.

In situations in which an employer disciplines an employee both because the employee has violated a work rule and because the employee has engaged in protected union activity the discipline is unlawful unless the employer can show that the employee would have received the same discipline even if he or she had not engaged in the protected union activity.

Examples of illegal discrimination under Section 8(a)(3) include:

Discharging employees because they urged other employees to join a union.
Refusing to reinstate employees when jobs they are qualified for are open because they took part in a union's lawful strike.
Granting of "superseniority" to those hired to replace employees engaged in a lawful strike.
Demoting employee because they circulated a union petition among other employees asking the employer for an increase in pay.
Discontinuing an operation at one plant and discharging the employees involved followed by opening the same operation at another plant with new employees because the employees at the first plant joined a union.
Refusing to hire qualified applicants for jobs because they belong to a union. If would also be a violation if the qualified applicants were refused employment because they did not belong to a union, or because they belonged to one union, rather than another.

Section 8(a)(4) Discrimination for NLRB Activity
Section 8(a)(4) makes it an unfair labor practice for an employer "to discharge or otherwise discriminate against an employee because he has filed charges or given testimony under this Act". This provision guards the right of employees to seek the protection of the Act by using the processes of the NLRB. Like the previous section, it forbids an employer to discharge, lay off, or engage in other forms of discrimination in working conditions against employees who have filed charges with the NLRB, given affidavits to NLRB investigators, or testified at an NLRB hearing. Violations of this section are in most cases also violations of Section 8(a)(3).

Examples of violations of Section 8(a)(4) are:

Refusing to reinstate employees when jobs they are otherwise qualified for are open because they filed charges with the NLRB claiming their layoffs were based on union activity.
Demoting employees because they testified at an NLRB hearing.

Section 8(a)(5) Refusal to Bargain in Good Faith
Section 8(a)(5) makes it illegal for an employer to refuse to bargain in good faith about wages, hours, and other conditions of employment with the representative selected by a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for collective bargaining. A bargaining representative which seeks to enforce its right concerning an employer under this section must show that it has been designated by a majority of the employees, that the unit is appropriate, and that there has been both a demand that the employer bargain and a refusal by the employer to do so. This Section prohibits an employer from changing any term or condition of employment without first giving the employees' designated union a chance to bargain on that subject. The employer's duty to bargain also includes a requirement that it supply the union, upon request, all information "relevant and necessary" to bargain intelligently or to enforce an existing agreement.

You can find additional Articles on rights as a union member in ITPE Newsletter Issues. Reported by the ITPE Unions Counsel.

The ITPE wants you to know your rights. By all of us knowing our rights it makes everyone's job easier. As a union member you have rights, as an employee you have rights, your employer also has rights, the Union has rights.

It must be emphasized that the above is only a brief outline of your rights you as an employee have. There are many more when you become a Union Member.

More information available on this website related to Know Your Rights:

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