A union raid is when a challenger or outsider union tries to take over the membership base of an existing incumbent union, typically through a union raid election in the United States and Canada. Union raids have been criticized by the labor movement because they promote rivalry between unions and direct resources away from organizing the non-unionized workforce in the United States and Canada, a majority of the total workforce.

History

Raids can be informal through campaigning and or soliciting an incumbent union's members or more direct by an outsider union calling for a decertification election in a bid to take over an incumbent union's membership. Between 1975 and 1989 over 1,414 multi-union raid elections were documented by the

NLRB The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Natio ...

in the United States. In Canada, official data on scale and success of union raids is limited to the Federal government and the province of British Columbia. A research study on Ontario, Canada's most populous province, found 1,046 multi-union raids elections between 1975 and 2003, with 181 raids attributed to the

Canadian Auto Workers The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW; formally the National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada) was one of Canada's largest and highest profile labour unions. In 2013, it merged with the Communications, Energy and ...

and SEIU Healthcare raids over the years 2001–2002.

United Electrical Workers

After the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, a number of union raid elections were enacted by the CIO; against the recently expelled left-wing union affiliates, accounting for almost half of all union raids in the year 1950. The majority of these raids were between the expelled United Electrical Workers and the newly formed anti communist CIO affiliate

International Union of Electrical Workers The International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) was a North American labor union representing workers in the electrical manufacturing industry. While consistently using the acronym IUE, it took on several full names during its history, origin ...

. It is debated whether they should be considered union raids. Many union locals were effectively voting on which faction of the split "United Electric Workers" they wanted to affiliate with.

No raid agreements

Raiding by the AFL affiliated

Teamsters The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), also known as the Teamsters Union, is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of The Team Drivers International Union and The Teamsters National Union, the u ...

union was such a serious issue that it prompted the trade union centers AFL, and CIO, who had attempted to sign a no-raid agreement for years, to finally negotiate and implement such a pact in December 1953. Initially Teamsters president

Beck Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collag ...

refused to sign the agreement and threatened to withdraw the Teamsters from the AFL if forced to adhere to it. Three months after the pact was signed, the Teamsters agreed to submit to the terms of the no-raid agreement. Shortly thereafter, the AFL adopted Article 20 of its constitution, which forbade its member unions from raiding one another. In 1968 the

Alliance for Labor Action The Alliance for Labor Action (ALA) was an American and Canadian national trade union center which existed from July 1968 until January 1972. Its two main members were the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, ...

made up of the

United Auto Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico) ...

and the Teamsters, offered the

AFL–CIO The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million ac ...

a no-raid pact as a first step toward building a working relationship between the competing trade union centers, but the offer was rejected. Since 1992, the

constitution has contained a clause inside Article XX forbidding union raids among its affiliates with various remedies for resolving inter-union conflict.

Notes

References

{{Authority control Trade union elections United States labor case law Mergers and acquisitions