By Paul Kengor

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According to David Wilderman, legislative director of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, and John Haer of the Service Employees International Union, to organize a union, a petition must be filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Before filing, organizers need support for unionization from at least 30 percent of those eligible to be represented. At that point, an election is scheduled—a referendum of sorts—on unionization. If a majority vote prevails, then a union is formed. The employer is then legally obliged to sit down and bargain with the union. Organizers are careful about the timing of an election because if one is held and defeated, another cannot take place for a year.

However, before the petition-election process takes place, members must be recruited and organized. Professional organizers will often target an industry they’ve learned is ripe for unionization, i.e., high employee dissatisfaction and low morale. Often, says John Haer, staff director of SEIU’s Local 585 in Pittsburgh—which represents about 3000 workers in 12 western PA hospitals alone—the union will get tips from a "cold call" made to its offices by an employee.

The organizers conduct their own mobilization. "We try to contact them anyway we can," says Haer. "That’s no secret. You find out who knows who. Go to them one by one...We do house calls. It’s very grind it out, person to person, labor intensive."

Once enough people are organized and a vote is scheduled, the process becomes contentious. There is a period of eight to ten weeks between the filing for an election and the election itself. Typically, the employer will actively intervene at certain points during the election campaign. Haer describes this period as a "psychological war" in which the employer brings in anti-union consultants and pools together management to oppose the drive. The employer warns of "costly" union dues and the possibility of strikes and picket lines.

"From our side," says Haer, "it’s not just a question of setting up an election, but also getting in place a communication network and other systems of support. From the time you file until the election, you better have a support system in place ready to take on management, or else you’ll lose every time." Haer says management’s campaigns are so successful that he strategically advises that a petition not be filed unless there is 75 percent union support among employees, since "you’re going to lose 15-20 percent once management gets going."

Robert Weinmann, M.D., president of the California-based Union of American Physicians and Dentists—a 5000 member group—says his recruitment takes place by word of mouth but also via advertising on hospital bulletin boards, an Internet site, and his own personal P.R. activities, such as publishing Op-Ed pieces in local publications.

Yet, Weinmann and other organizers are quick to point out that recruitment hasn’t been overly difficult recently. John Mattiacci, president of the podiatrists union, has received 200 inquiries since the October 24 announcement. He has been invited to speak in 35 states and has received calls from places as disparate as West Virginia and Iowa.

For Weinmann and Mattiacci, changes in the health care industry have been a boon to recruitment.