Guest Column: Ready For The Employee Free-Choice Act?

By Jon Lawrence, VP of Product Marketing, RedPrairie

Ready or not, here comes the Employee Free-Choice Act, a piece of pending legislation that encourages employee union representation and collective bargaining. According to the AFL-CIO, workers are fired in 25 percent of private-sector union-organizing campaigns. The Act attempts to address that issue with provisions to reduce barriers to unionization. While the Congressional legislators tabled the Act in 2007, enactment appears likely in 2009.

Opinions of the Act, and its impact, can vary depending on which side of the paycheck you stand. Opinions aside, one thing is crystal clear – employers will need to take a good look at the Act and prepare for the likelihood of changes in their operating environments that may include an increase in employee representation by labor unions. Many employers already know the risk of financial penalties associated with non-compliance of statutory regulations, and a collective bargaining agreement will increase the scope of possible financial penalties associated with violations of a union contract.

The big-picture view of this proposed legislation is that workforce rules are likely to get even more complex. Employers already have to follow a large number of federal, state, and local labor laws that include limiting hours for minors, lunch hour and break requirements, and many localized nuances in the labor codes. The rules for equalization of overtime pay, and how it is offered and administered are also complex. So, in one sense, the Act might be the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of being able to manage workforce rules correctly.

Consistency in compliance – whether enforcement of statutory regulations or the terms of a collective bargaining agreement – requires good workforce management (WFM) software and business-process automation associated with the management of scheduling and pay rules. This is especially true for those companies doing business in multiple states across the U.S., which face numerous and potentially conflicting labor rules.