The FINANCIAL — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Workforce Freedom Initiative (WFI) issued a new report on union exemptions from local minimum wage laws. The report, Labor’s Minimum Wage Exemption: Making Unions the Low Cost Option, highlights union exclusions from specific minimum wage laws in ten municipalities around the country, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“By creating a carve-out from minimum wage laws, unions are hoping employers will embrace unionization to avoid costly new mandates,” said Glenn Spencer, vice president of WFI. “They are enlisting the coercive power of government to make labor the ‘low-cost’ option.”
As the report notes, union organizing accelerated in several municipalities where unions were given an exemption from minimum wage ordinances. In Long Beach, Calif., hotels that had been the targets of multi-year organizing campaigns agreed to unionize shortly after a minimum wage ordinance with a union exemption was passed in 2012. In Los Angeles, Calif., UNITE-HERE’s membership increased by more than 7,000 after a similar law passed in 2006. A second Los Angeles ordinance, passed in October 2014, is the subject of a lawsuit filed on December 16 by the American Hotel and Lodging Association and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association.
While most cities with a union minimum wage exemption are in California, the issue is not confined to the West Coast. Milwaukee County in Wisconsin and Chicago, Ill., also have such ordinances. Washington, D.C., attempted to exempt unions from its minimum wage law before passing a clean bill in 2013, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The report highlights how these union carve-outs may force an employer to accept organizing by card check instead of secret ballots, and can lead to several harmful outcomes.
“Workers may not get the raise they were promised, get stuck paying dues to a union they didn’t want, and even lose their jobs while employers could be tied to a contract they otherwise wouldn’t have signed. The only clear winner is the union, which winds up with new dues and political clout,” Spencer concluded.
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