Author: Christina Beau

With “card check” top of mind, some opponents have dug up an old National Labor Relations Board regulation and claimed that many small businesses are exempt from union activity.

    That’s not necessarily true.

    In a 1959 ruling, the NLRB established that it would have jurisdiction only over private companies doing business across state lines and meeting certain minimum sales levels: $500,000 for retail and $50,000 for nonretail (though certain industries have special limits). Those figures remain the same today.

    But that doesn’t mean employees at those companies can’t organize, or protest and attempt to negotiate better working conditions. It does mean, however, that in doing so, they would be on their own, with no NLRB protection against unfair labor practices.

    That said, “It’s actually very easy for us to assert jurisdiction over employers because interstate commerce doesn’t have to be direct,” says Gail Moran, assistant to the regional director for the NLRB in Chicago. It could be argued, for instance, that a local restaurant doing business with a cross-state food supplier is engaged indirectly in interstate commerce.

    Which is why, in practice, very few employers are exempt, says Jules Crystal, a former NLRB trial attorney who now represents companies as a partner at Bryan Cave in Chicago.

    And many employers would rather have NLRB involvement anyway.

    “In most cases, when a union comes knocking on an employer’s door, that employer would rather have the [NLRB’s] rules and regulations and case precedent to rely upon, and thus the board’s jurisdiction on its side,” he says.

    A bigger issue for workers at many small companies is how the NLRB defines “employees.” The NLRB won’t certify a union unless it includes at least two non-supervisory workers, and the definition of “supervisory” is under debate. Thus some small companies could be exempt on those grounds alone.

If the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law, small-business owners will be among the many employers dealing with unions for the first time.

    The act, supported by President Barack Obama, would require employers to recognize a union if a majority of workers sign cards indicating they want representation.

    With other priorities on the table—especially the economic stimulus bill—the Employee Free Choice Act may have to wait its turn for an Obama administration push on Capitol Hill. But labor and business groups already are fighting over the bill, which promises to make it easier to organize American workplaces.

    No matter what happens with this so-called card-check bill, Obama has made it clear that labor will have a voice. Already he has issued three pro-labor executive orders, picked a secretary of labor (Hilda Solis) with union roots, and signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

    The tide has changed. What does that mean for business?

    “It means an employer who violates the law is more likely to get caught, but that’s it,” says Robert Bruno, director of the labor education program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “It certainly doesn’t hurt business if you’re otherwise operating consistent with the law.”

    Despite the other steps the Obama administration has taken, the Employee Free Choice Act remains a key goal for organized labor.

    The card-check petition isn’t new. Under current law, the National Labor Relations Board will certify a union if 51 percent of workers sign cards asking for representation or if 51 percent vote yes in a secret-ballot election (which first requires a petition signed by 30 percent of the workers). But current law also says that employers don’t have to recognize a card-check request for representation and can demand a secret-ballot election instead.

    Advocates say that the Employee Free Choice Act  would leave that decision—card check or secret ballot—up to employees. But once a majority of workers sign cards authorizing a union, a company would have to recognize it. Employers could no longer insist on the secret-ballot election, nor could any employees who might have signed a card with the intention of invoking such an election. Both labor and business groups are predicting a surge in unionization, as much as doubling the 7.5 percent of private-sector workers now represented by unions.

    The bill also would require employers and unions to submit to binding arbitration if they can’t negotiate a contract within 120 days. And it increases penalties for employers who infringe on employees’ right to organize.

    Small businesses certainly will be among the newly unionized workplaces (though there are revenue limits on the NLRB’s jurisdiction over small employers). UIC’s Bruno cautions that ease of organizing isn’t the only issue.

    “Do you really organize a mom-and-pop just because you can? No, there are still economic factors,” he says. “Does the employer have the ability to pay higher wages? Is the employer in an industry where it can pass increased labor costs on to customers?”

    Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been running ads and raising the specter of companies having to close if unions demand too much.

    The current economy notwithstanding, historically that reasoning hasn’t held up, according to data compiled by the AFL-CIO and American Rights at Work, a nonprofit pro-labor group based in Washington. They argue that although 51 percent of companies threaten to close if a union wins an election, only 1 percent actually do.

Coercion concerns
   Business groups also contend that mandatory recognition of card-check petitions would erode employee privacy and allow organizers to coerce workers into signing. And employers worry about ceding control over pay and work conditions to an NLRB arbitrator.

    “It is a scary proposition to have a third party imposing on an employer the terms and conditions of employment,” says Mark Spognardi, a partner representing employers at Arnstein & Lehr in Chicago.

    David Goss, 46, general manager of Imperial Zinc Corp., a foundry on Chicago’s South Side with $75 million in annual revenue and 22 of 35 employees unionized by the Teamsters, says he prefers negotiating directly with the union.

    “Once the NLRB is involved, employers are at a great disadvantage,” he says. “You’re going to be encouraged to work out an agreement to do something you normally wouldn’t have done.”

    Labor groups counter that secret-ballot elections often are corrupted by management coercion.

    Provisions could change as the act evolves, notes Jules Crystal, a former NLRB trial attorney who now represents employers as a partner at Bryan Cave in Chicago.

    One possibility: Instead of allowing mandatory card check, the act could shorten the time between petition and election by a week or so, from the more typical 30 to 60 days.

    “The unions are right—the process is much too long,” he says.

    No matter the specifics, Crystal thinks much can be resolved with a little civility.

   “Many employers take the position that it’s a war, that it’s we vs. they,” he says. “Not to be Pollyanna-ish, but when it’s a collective approach, if you’re honest and explain what you need, unions respond to that.

    “Then you bargain hard at the negotiating table.”

This story was updated March 13. An earlier version did not fully describe a key provision of the Employee Free Choice Act.

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When Stephen Bell graduated with a degree in environmental management from the University of Rhode Island in 1993, he hoped to follow the earth-friendly path he had cultivated during a childhood of wandering Rhode Island’s red maple swamps.

    But environmental jobs were few and far between, they paid poorly, and they were so fringe as to be risky. So Bell dabbled in environmental education for a year, then moved to Chicago to earn a master’s in art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

That led him to jobs in education, visitor services and operations with the Field Museum and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, then to the Chicago Center for Green Technology, a city-owned facility that offers public education and demonstration programs.

It wasn’t until January, however, that Bell found the job with his name written all over it: the newly created post of director of sustainable operations at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois.

There, Bell discovered a new generation of environmentally minded interns who won’t be traveling the circuitous career route that he did.

“These interns have a completely different background. They’re architects, land-use planners and policymakers. They are actually planning their careers around sustainability, which is a much different job environment than I came from,” he says.

Careers that used to be niche are now mainstream, says Andrew Horning, who manages the business-science master’s program at the University of Michigan.

“Companies have realized there’s a real business opportunity there,” he says.

Now that he’s found his dream job, Bell hasn’t wasted any time, especially since he’s building a sustainability operation from scratch.

Before hiring Bell, the garden did an environmental audit, which he has used as a baseline to develop long-term goals, drawing input from staff and thinking hard about the garden as a role model.

As the garden staff begin a $100 million project to expand into a world-class plant-conservation research center, CEO Sophia Siskel says it’s their responsibility to “embrace sustainability” and encourage the public to do the same.

First came the easy stuff: switching food-service tableware from plastic to biodegradable materials, adjusting heating and cooling temperatures by a few degrees and ending the sale of bottled water at the garden to cut down on plastics waste. Soon they’ll install low-flow aerators on the garden’s faucets.

What’s next will take more time, including writing grants and raising funds. But Bell plans, among other things, to improve building efficiency and use green standards for new construction. He also intends to make the garden cafe a venue for local organic food and to trade the garden’s old fleet vehicles and lawn equipment for alternative-energy models.

“This isn’t a fad,” Bell says. “There is no ‘green team’ here, no six or seven people whose responsibility it is to take greening seriously. Sustainability needs to be incorporated into everybody’s job description.”

Two years ago, Gary Hardy would have told you green was the color of money and grass, and that’s about it. Then he went back to school.

    Hardy, 51, is a senior project superintendent at Leopardo Construction Inc. in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

    When his boss, general superintendent George Tuhowski, mentioned a new building energy technologies certificate being offered at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago, a light bulb (compact fluorescent, of course) went off.

    “I knew this was the wave of the future,” Hardy says, citing the city’s green roofs and green-building policies, as well as its 2016 Olympics bid, which, if successful, would spark a construction frenzy. “I wanted to become a leader.”

    Hardy, who joined Leopardo in 2003 after almost 30 years in carpentry and construction, began the program in fall 2006 and graduated in December.

    For three semesters, he took two evening classes a week, writing weekly essays and spending some Saturdays visiting wind farms and buildings renovated or constructed using U.S. Green Building Council standards. Courses covered energy efficiency, as well as energy and environmental mechanical systems, certifications and maintenance.

    With that training under his belt, Hardy plans this summer to become accredited in the principles of the council’s ’Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which governs green construction practices and ratings.

    Eleven of Leopardo’s project managers and engineers and one vice president are accredited under the program referred to as LEED, but Hardy would be the first among the company’s 50 superintendents to earn accreditation.

    “It’s nice, being in construction, to know where you’re going a week from now and to not worry about being laid off,” he says.

    David Inman, project manager for the building energy technologies program at Wilbur Wright, says LEED accreditation is a particular boost for workers in Chicago because so many green projects are in the works.

    “If we were doing this anywhere other than Chicago, we might not emphasize LEED as much,” he said.

    Leopardo began doing LEED projects in 2005, and as interest has grown, so has that side of its business. Tuhowski, the company’s general superintendent, estimates that green jobs will account for more than 20 percent of Leopardo’s $300 million in revenue this year.

    Employee LEED accreditation “gives us the upper hand when we bid,” he says.

    Current projects include several green roofs and a 195,000-square-foot, $70 million public-safety campus in Aurora that will be LEED-certified.

    This fall, Hardy will be supervising a LEED-certified, 40,000-square-foot project for Harris Alternatives LLC, a hedge fund investment firm.

    “Everybody wants to be green,” he says. “It’s a great selling feature for any business.”

    Maybe even his own someday. Hardy and his wife have five acres in Vail, Arizona, where he’s itching to build a green house.

    He would also like to open a division of Leopardo Construction there, perhaps in three years or so. Just long enough to make some more green.

Except for the handful of do-gooder roles held by an idealistic few, environmental jobs used to be all about regulatory compliance. No more.

    Thanks to the likes of former Vice President Al Gore, rapidly mobilizing consumers and the very real threat of legislation limiting carbon emissions, businesses are seeing the environmental benefit and the financial sense of giving a hoot.

    It’s a green new world, and it needs employees—lots of them.

    In the U.S., 5.3 million jobs have been created by environmental management and protection, according to a 2006 study by Management Information Services Inc., a Washington, D.C., research firm that has been tracking green jobs for two decades.

    Those jobs include such titles as chief sustainability officer, solar-panel installer and software engineer, on top of more traditional environmental careers in wastewater treatment and hazardous materials management.

    Those workers already make up a sizable part of the economy. The 5.3 million figure is almost half the number of people employed by hospitals, and nearly a third of the number in construction. It’s 10 times the number of jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.

    By 2010, green employment is expected to reach 5.8 million jobs; by 2020, 6.9 million. Meanwhile, corresponding green-industry sales—including energy suppliers and consumer-products makers—are predicted to climb from $341 billion to $496 billion in 2020.

A green-collar town
In Chicago, the swelling ranks have inspired the creation of a green-jobs initiative, as well as new programs at area schools including Wilbur Wright College and the Illinois Institute of Technology.

    “I have more internship and job opportunities than I have students to fill them,” says George Nassos, director of the environmental management master’s program at the institute’s Stuart School of Business, which has been training students in pollution prevention and compliance since 1995 and sustainability since 1999.

    “When we introduced sustainability to the curriculum, nobody cared,” says Nassos, whose students find work in corporate environmental policy, consulting, health and safety, and with accounting and law firms that have sustainability practices. “But in the last six months, students are starting to get jobs because of that.”

    It’s the same story at Wilbur Wright, a community college that has offered an associate’s degree in environmental technology since 1994. In fall 2006, the college used a state grant to add an emphasis on building energy technology and sustainability, covering topics such as natural resource conservation and renewable heating sources.

    Graduates now go on to work as chief building engineers, demolition supervisors, construction superintendents and building managers, or in trades such as carpentry and heavy equipment operation.

    “Before we even finished the pilot, it had gotten so popular that we had to offer it again, not on scholarship but for tuition,” program director Victoria Cooper says.

The implications
   In September, Wilbur Wright joined a coalition of businesses, organizations and labor groups to form the Chicagoland Green Collar Jobs Initiative, which this summer will try to quantify Chicago’s green workforce, as well as assess job training programs and college curricula to see if the demand can be met.

    “We’re asking, ‘Is this really a change in the economy?’ and ‘What are the job implications of that change?’ ” says Ted Wysocki, CEO of the Local Economic and Employment Development Council, a jobs-creation group involved in the initiative.

    As with a growing number of similar efforts nationwide, the Chicago group wants to know whether green jobs offer more—and better—opportunities for blue-collar workers.

    Raquel Pinderhughes, a professor of urban studies at San Francisco State University, thinks they do.

    Pinderhughes, who studies barriers to employment, has identified 22 economic sectors with green-collar opportunities, including food production (using organic agriculture), manufacturing (making energy-efficient and recycled products) and auto repair (servicing alternative-fuel vehicles).

    She says green-collar jobs aren’t a rebranding of blue-collar trades. Rather, they are safer, typically higher-paying jobs that are “community-serving and meaningful, which resonates very deeply with people on the street.”

    In San Francisco, for example, a low-skilled worker doing food prep or grounds maintenance might make $21,000 a year. A similarly skilled solar installer or recycling worker can make $35,000.

    Kevin Doyle, a consultant whose Boston business, Green Economy, advises companies and organizations on green-jobs development, says that even traditional manual-labor jobs—say, in construction or building maintenance—can be improved by adding green skills.

    “In the process, workers will change how they measure success in their careers away from just earning a living, and toward building a more sustainable world,” he says.