On April 14, the National Labor Relations Board changed its rules for processing union elections. The new rules stack the deck against employers by decreasing the time between the filing of a petition and the election, which means that an employer now has less time to educate its employees about the potential impacts of unionization. The new rules also add procedural requirements that employers must address, which can distract the employer from the more important task of running its campaign. Given the significant changes, many have questioned whether it is possible to win an election under the new rules.
Having just completed our first election under the new rules, we can say that the answer is yes. But it wasn’t easy. Though the election concluded with a resounding company victory, the chances of success looked far grimmer when the union’s petition arrived a mere 23 days before the election. Under the old rules, the average time between petition and election was 38 days. Excluding weekends and a holiday, we had only 15 working days. Our experience under the new rules taught us that, though elections are still winnable, there is no room for error, and there is not enough time to begin a campaign from scratch once the petition is filed.
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