Employee Free Choice: Amplifying Employee Voice without Silencing Employers – A Proposal for Reforming the National Labor Relations Act

This Note investigates the effectiveness of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in balancing unions, employers’, and employees’ rights during the course of union organizing drives. After reviewing case law and commentary, it concludes that the NLRA’s certification regime is ineffective and permits pressures that inhibit employees from expressing their real desires about whether or not to be represented by a union. This Note then examines proposed alternatives for certifying unions, and takes note of Canada’s federal and ten provincial certification regimes. Finally, it concludes that the NLRA must be amended to protect worker free choice, and proposes reforms including limiting unions to a public sixty-day organizing campaign, designing a uniform authorization card to be submitted with a fee by employees desiring union representation, and establishing a verification process for these cards.