The Employee Free Choice Act is the most important labor law reform in 50 years and is essential to creating fair negotiations between workers and management. One of its most-needed provisions calls for arbitration in cases in which newly unionized employees cannot get their employer to agree to a contract. Although this first-contract arbitration provision has gotten less attention than the provisions that would reduce coercion in choosing a union by requiring an employer to recognize signed authorization cards, it is equally important to fair treatment of workers.

If employees vote to unionize, it is left to their union and management to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. The problem is that federal law does not require the employer to ever reach agreement with the union. The federal agency that protects the rights of workers has no power to prevent or punish refusals to reach a bargain. Consequently, employers can and do frequently refuse to enter into a contract and insist on unilaterally dictating terms of employment because they know that, without a contract, support for the union will eventually melt away. During the past decade, nearly half of all newly certified unions failed to reach a first contract within a year, and one-quarter of new unions did not have a contract after three years of bargaining. That means that the workers who exercised their right to select union representation never got what the law guarantees them: collective representation in establishing wages and working conditions.

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