Apple 'created decoy labor group' to derail unionization | Hacker News Reader

Apple 'created decoy labor group' to derail unionization

theregister.com

416 pointsBender38 comments

Their main complaint and ask here is not the "decoy group", despite the headline. That is because they can't meaningfully complain that apple created a non union group to hear concerns and give employees a voice (regardless of whether it did). Such a complaint would be hilarious.

Instead, the main complaint is that apple held captive audience meetings and wants the NLRB to ban them.

As they well know, they are legal. The NLRB did ban them many years ago, and the supreme court overturned the ban. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_audience_meeting

Whatever one may think of them, it will take Congress or States to change it, not the NLRB. Congress was very close last year on it, too.

> That is because they can't meaningfully complain that apple created a non union group to hear concerns and give employees a voice (regardless of whether it did). Such a complaint would be hilarious.

This isn't true. Employer unions are prohibited by the NLRA, and the linked complaint's third violation is listed as "Creating and soliciting employees to join an employer-created / employer-dominated labor organization as a means of stifling Union activities." This attorney's site gives examples of when employer-sponsored groups start to violate the NLRA's provisions banning employer unions, which is when these groups start to discuss working conditions:

https://laborlaw.foxrothschild.com/2017/08/articles/general-...

> When the employer creates and sponsors an employee group where the discussion turns to subjects such as employee pay, employee benefits, or even matters such as employee work schedules, this creates a risk that the NLRB might find that the employer has improperly created something that is the equivalent of an employer sponsored union.

The case you cite was overturned by the DC circuit and sent back to the NLRB for reconsideration a year or two ago. The NLRB found again last month in favor of the CWA, and it will be appealed again (and the CWA will lose again) to the DC circuit, because it is in, fact, true.

If the employer says "we want to hear what you think can be better about your pay, your benefits, or your work schedules", there is nothing illegal about this. Even if it creates groups to do so.

To the degree the NLRA tries to ban this, it would be struck down as applied. Courts will construct it to focus on the bargaining aspects of a union rather than speech aspects. This is very clear from precedent, and in line with what happened at the DC circuit. None of the unions have been dumb enough to spin the wheel here because the result is obvious. If they tried to control non-union speech-related feedback loops, it would fair very poorly, and has so far in court.

It is true the NLRA tries to ban company unions, but the part most likely to stand these days, is again, effectively "company controlled collective bargaining" (IE the company elects representatives and only bargains with a company controlled/elected union), etc.

Again, i'm not stating a position of whether this is good or not, just trying to accurately state the current legal reality.

Not really sure how you got to that point. I'd say given the way the document words it, point (1) Holding a mandatory captive audience meeting in which its representative stated that the Employer would refuse to bargain certain subjects if a union was formed; and (3) Creating and soliciting employees to join an employer-created / employer-dominated labor organization as a means of stifling Union activities are both equally "unfair labor practices".

>>>"That is because they can't meaningfully complain that apple created a non union group to hear concerns and give employees a voice (regardless of whether it did). Such a complaint would be hilarious."

Why? unfair labor practices can be a whole host of things. I'm not American but according to https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/in... it would seem Apple is on the wrong side of the law in this one arguably. I wonder if they try this stuff in Aus?

On the latter - The NLRB's view of the NLRA is not the same as the courts view of the NLRA a lot of times.

The administrative judges of the NLRB are frequently overturned in the relative scheme of things.

What happens is that they are appointed by the president (and confirmed by the senate). So depending on the party in power/remaining terms of service, you can get fairly ideological collections of judges. It has become more bi-modal over the years, like a lot of the US.

So depending on prevailing legal ideologies vs partisan ideologies, you end up with lots of overturned cases.

Here's the last 10 years:

https://www.nlrb.gov/reports/nlrb-case-activity-reports/unfa...

So last year, they lost in appeals court 35% of the time.

The average agency reversal rate is closer to ~15%, so 35% is a lot.

The spike in 2016 is also interesting, not sure what happened there (IE it's not obvious that it's related to obama leaving office in jan, 2017). I suspect instead someone funded clearing of backlog or something.

All that said, the NLRB pushes parties to settle 90+% of cases to start (this combines their two overall areas), which is actually theoretically great. NLRB proceedings are not that expensive for people, unlike court, so it's unlikely to be people trying to bankrupt each other as you would find in straight civil court. Once it gets into appeals, it gets expensive (leading into the above).

So it's not all bad.

> In a memo issued in April, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo asked the NLRB "to find mandatory meetings in which employees are forced to listen to employer speech concerning the exercise of their statutory labor rights, including captive audience meetings, a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

You can read the memo here--I find its case very compelling: https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d458372316b

Normally I'd say "call your congressperson," but this is in the executive branch, so I'm not sure how to best support it.

When I had a job that was represented by a union they forced us all to listen to the union representative who came in and gave their pro union propaganda to everyone. I was annoyed that they didn’t have anybody to present the opposite point of view.

Yeah and unions are where the whole “paying your dues”, “I’ve paid my dues”, “check is in the mail” memes come from. I’d much rather deal with management alone than union leadership.

>I’d much rather deal with management alone than union leadership.

You only say that b/c you've been really lucky/unlucky so far. Either you don't know what dealing with hostile management is like or you've had really shitty unions. Either way most employees benefit greatly from having representation in the workplace rather than having to deal with a dictator alone.

Well to be 100% honest you’re right on both counts. Most things in life lie on a spectrum and most instances lie somewhere close to the middle of that spectrum. My comment lands on an extreme anti-union end. I personally do not want to be a union member but I do admit that, on average, a worker benefits from union membership.

Congress has the power to make laws that the Executive Branch is responsible for enforcing.

Ok apart from the "OMG strikebreakers in this day and age!" reaction what I am trying to get my head around is ... how n somewhere more sane like say Germany, Unions are ... look, why not replace management with unions? I mean a union rep is actually voted for by the employees. Most management is administrative and the important bits (allocation of resource, leadership and vision) are hardly done by the managers (it sort of becomes a hodge podge of people agreeing a vision and allocating themselves because they actually understood the vision).

Anyway - Am looking for a way to get democracy into companies and realised that it's kinda already there

> look, why not replace management with unions?

Unions are free to start businesses, aren't they? Workers can also form cooperatives.

Ages ago I was doing an internship at SAP in Walldorf, Germany. At the time, SAP had just gotten 'Mitbestimmung' und union representatives. By German law you only need a handful of workers to demand this, no need to win any majority.

Let's just say, the union folks weren't popular with the rank and file employees I spoke to.

> Anyway - Am looking for a way to get democracy into companies and realised that it's kinda already there

Well, there's also shareholder democracy.

But why do you even want democracy in the workplace? When I don't like the burgers at McDonald's, I don't try to vote to make them better; I just go over to Burger King next door.

Why ?

Something something 50% + of resource allocation is done inside fiefdoms where theoretically the CeO / major shareholder has dictatorial power

Plus most (large) companies have serious efficiency problems - I think the solution to bureaucracy is not going to be what got us there.

plus I find most arguments that are "free market works" to be laughable in the face of experience

Corporations often trade off the efficiency of many small things, even pervasive things, for overall greater effectiveness.

It can be frustrating for workers and customers, and it’s not always a trade that pays off, but it works enough for many companies to be both chronically inefficient and successful.

Leadership optimizes for effective control toward increasing total income. They don’t worry about waste that could be a distraction to eliminate, create unpredictability for small payoffs, or if it’s offset (in their view) by greater income.

This is going too far, and honestly has a Egor Putilov smell to me.

Apple fights right to repair same way - creating fake self repair program to pretend its all solved.

Funnily, if it would have been Twitter, it would have been all the rage for a week.

Because it's Apple, everybody will have forgotten and forgiven tomorrow.

..And the headline would have been "Elon Musk created decoy labor group.."

I don’t have anything to add here, but as a guy who spent ~10 years as an elected union leader and (as of now) 5 years on the management side as a labor consultant (they guy they always call a unionbuster) it’s just really really fascinating how radically different the abstract discussions of unions and union-related stuff is from the close-up nuts-and-bolts of NLRA election campaigns. I’m sure it’s the same for a player or coach reading about the NFL on ESPN, then reflecting on the daily realities, whatever they might be.

Jennifer Abruzzo openly flouts the law of the land. It is hard to take the NLRB seriously during her tenure. All she is doing is halting action while we wait ages for the courts to dismiss her theories.

Yeah, even as a non lawyer the nlrb findings seem out there these days. She’ll be around for a while - retread Trump is a no go in 24 - I’ll be donating heavily to dems again and I’m confident many others will to vs having him back in charge

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