Faculty & Research
Card-checks and Neutrality Agreements: How Hotel Unions Staged a Comeback in 2006
Vol 7 No 6
By: David Sherwyn, J.D. and Zev J. Eigen J.D.
Executive Summary: Summer 2006 saw multiple negotiations between the big-city hotel operators and UNITE HERE, the union that represents hotel employees. The negotiations represented the culmination of the union's carefully set strategy to reconfigure the playing field in hotel labor relations. By arranging to have several cities' contracts expire within weeks of each other in summer 2006 and then splitting off one chain from another, the union was able to achieve its goal of selling labor peace through the threat of labor unrest. Operators in San Francisco tested the union's resolve in 2004, and the result then was a season of strikes and lockouts. Rather than endure the same scenario, operators in several other large cities negotiated for, and achieved, labor peace. While neither side is confirming the presence of neutrality and card-check agreements as part of the settlement, one of the union's stated goals was to be able to organize through the card-checks, rather than conduct secret-ballot elections. Under a card-check agreement, an employer agrees to recognize the union as its employees' representative after a majority of employees have signed cards stating that they are interested in organizing. The agreement eliminates what has traditionally been the next step, which is a secret-ballot election. Negotiations are not the only means by which unions are seeking to achieve this card-check procedure. The U.S. House of Representatives in early 2007 passed a bill that would mandate card-checks in all union campaigns. While the outlook for this bill is dim under the current administration, its fate may be determined in the 2008 election.
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- Card-checks and Neutrality Agreements: How Hotel Unions Staged a Comeback in 2006 By: David Sherwyn, J.D. and Zev J. Eigen J.D.
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About David Sherwyn, J.D.
David Sherwyn (BS, JD, Cornell University) is an associate professor of law at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. He is a research fellow at the Center for Labor and Employment Law at New York University's School of Law. In addition, Dave is of counsel to the law firm of Shea Stokes Roberts & Wagner. Prior to joining the School of Hotel Administration, Dave practiced management-side labor and employment law for six years.
Dave has published articles in the Stanford Law Review, Berkeley Journal of Labor and Employment Law, Fordham Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Labor and Employment Law Journal, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.
Dave teaches H ADM 387: Business and Hospitality Law, a required class with more than 100 students. In addition, each spring, Dave teaches H ADM 485: Employment Discrimination Law and Union-Management Relations and HA 481 Labor Relations in the Hospitality Industry. Dave received a Hotel School Teacher of the Year Award in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005, 2007 and 2008. Dave has been nominated for the fraternity and sorority teaching award twelve times and has won the award twice.
In 2002 Dave conceived of, organized, and hosted the Center for Hospitality Research's first Hospitality Industry Roundtable. Because of the success of the Labor and Employment Law Roundtable, the Center now hosts Roundtables in each of the disciplines that are represented in the School.
For more information visit http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/facultybios/faculty.html?id=72
