Do state right to work laws affect union decertification activity

In an earlier article ["Union Decertification -Some Recent Trends," The Employee Relations Law Journal, Vol. 5, No. 4, Spring 1980, pp. 533-48], the authors identified and discussed changes in five proxies for measuring the level of decertification activity from 1948 through 1978. The five measures were: number of decertification petitions fried, number of decertification elections held, number of decertification elections resulting in deunionization, number of eligible voters in decertification elections, and the number of eligible voters in units decertified. Additional research by the authors has been devoted to analyzing the various determinants of aggregate decertification activity and the resuits of this effort will be made available in the near future. In the meantime, tile question of whether state fight-to-work (SRTW) laws affect decertification activity has been examined in several cross-sectional regressions and the results of this effort are reported below. Theoretically, decertification activity should decrease in the presence of SRTW laws. In RTW states, a unionized employee can give up his union membership to avoid paying dues while retaining union negotiated benefits. In non-RTW states, a union member, faced with a union shop provision in the contract, must decertify the union to escape payment of dues. Since the employee can avoid the costs of union fees and dues in RTW states while retaining his job, there is a lower return to decertification. In non-RTW states, without decertification, the employee would have to leave his job to escape the out-of-pocket costs associated with the union. So, the employee covered by a union shop clause in a non-RTW state is more likely to join his colleagues to petition for a decertification election in order to avoid the fees and dues associated with the union. The only other alternative to decertification is to quit or be terminated. Therefore, it is expected that, after accounting for the other variables, decertification activity will be lower in states having RTW laws, i.e., the coefficient on RTW dummy should be negative. In the past, data on decertification activity have been reported only at the national or aggregate level, but in more recent years, individual state data have been made available in NLRB reports. Years 1970-1974 were selected to test for the impact of SRTW's on decertification activity. The model specified let total decertification petitions filed per million union members in each state be a function of the unemployment rate, per capita income, percentage of the work force unionized, and total work stoppages for each state. A SRTW dummy was introduced for each of the states having such laws. Cross-sectional regressions were then completed for the indicated years. The coefficient on the SRTW dummy was significantly negative for the 1971 regression but was insignificant in all of the other tests. This lack of consistent significance on the SRTW dummy implies that the presence or absence of these laws has little impact on decertification activity. Other things equal then, decertification activity will be just as high in RTW states as in non-RTW states. Once a union member perceives that the expected benefits of retaining the union as a bargaining agent are below the various costs, avoidance of continued unionization via the decertification process is selected over "free rider" status in RTW states and over paying dues and fees in non-RTW states.