UNION ORGANIZING AT FIRST CENTRAL BANK IN RIVER CITY
This case analysis discusses the legal and ethical issues associated with the efforts of the International Metalworkers Union (the "Union") to organize the workforce at the First Central Bank (the "Bank") in River City in 1986 and in the ensuing representation election.
During the 1980s and subsequently union organizing efforts and elections to determine whether employees would be represented by unions have often taken place in an unusually rancorous and contentious atmosphere. The percentage of nonagricultural employees represented by unions steadily fell throughout the 70s and 80s, a trend which has continued since. In the total nonagricultural work force that percentage fell from 35 percent in 1954 to 20 percent in 1980 and only 10.4 percent by 1995. (Paul Weiler, "Promises to Keep: Securing Workers' Rights to Self-Organization under the NLRA," 96 Harv.L.Rev. 1771 (June 1983); and William A. Whiteside, Jr. and Marvin L. Weinberg, "Coping with the Unionization Drive: A Guide for the Careful Employer," Practical Lawyer 42 (Dec. 1997)). Competition between unions and employers for the allegiance of white collar workers in the private sector such as the staff at the Bank was especially fierce because the losses of membership suffered by the unions in downsized and relocated manufacturing industries and normal attrition was not offset by gains in union membership among white collar workers in the public sector.
Not only were the unions desperately strongly during this period to maintain their membership basis, but management throughout the private sector, including commercial banking, was undergoing downsizing and restructuring, merger and acquisition activities and undertaking other measures to preserve their competitiveness. During the Reagan era, deregulation and resistance to unionization went hand in hand.
As the case illustrates, the employees of a bank in a mediu...