Tom Harkin: “over the past 2 days my Republican colleagues have raised several arguments about what the NLRB rule will do. I now want…”

“over the past 2 days my Republican colleagues have raised several arguments about what the NLRB rule will do. I now want to respond to their points and to clarify once again: this is a modest rule that simplifies preelection litigation in the small number of cases where the parties don't reach agreement and must resort to litigation. First, my colleagues across the aisle have pointed out that unions have recently won about 71 percent of elections, and so, they argue, the current system is completely fair to unions. This is an incredibly deceptive statistic. Unions have filed far fewer petitions in recent years--down from over 4,100 in 2001 to just over 2,000 in 2011. And in almost a third of cases where petitions are filed, the petition is withdrawn before an election. In other words, the process of getting to an election can be so slow, and employer anti-union attacks so potent, that unions are discouraged from going through the entire election process. For the most part, only in the rare cases where support is truly overwhelming or the employer does not oppose the union do unions win. In a related vein, Republicans have argued that elections are currently held promptly--on average, between 30 and 40 days after a petition is filed--and therefore no change in the rule is needed. But this argument misses the point of the rule. Currently, in the 10 percent of cases that are litigated, it takes around 124 days to get to an election.…”