During a hearing conducted by the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, Littler Shareholder Stefan Marculewicz explained the role that worker centers, also referred to as union front organizations (UFOs), play in modern labor organizing. Such worker centers, Marculewicz testified, are typically non-profit organizations that “offer a variety of services to their members, including education, training, employment services and legal advice.” The problem with these rapidly growing organizations, however, is that they are:

directly engaging employers or groups of employers to effectuate change in the wages, hours and terms and conditions of workers they claim to represent. Indeed, when it comes to such direct engagement, these worker centers often act no differently than traditional labor organizations. Yet, few of these groups comply with the laws that regulate labor organizations. Statutes like the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) contain significant protections with respect to representational democracy, organizational democracy, access to basic information and promotion of a duty of fair representation. These basic rights are an important part of the process governing the representation of employees in the workplace by third-party organizations.

Free of the restrictions and obligations imposed by NLRA and LMRDA, worker centers “can avoid accountability to the workers they claim to represent and avoid restraints that are imposed on traditional labor organizations.” Continue reading this entry at Littler's DC Employment Law Update.