Labor Relations Development Structure Process 10Th Edition John Fossum Solutions Manual Full Chapter PDF

Labor Relations Development Structure
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Solutions Manual
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Chapter 06 - Union Organizing Campaigns
CHAPTER 6
UNION ORGANIZING CAMPAIGNS
MAJOR POINTS
1. Organizing is a complex activity involving unions, employers, and the

National Labor Relations Board, whose job it is to administer the National
Labor Relations (Wagner) Act. The union seeks to organize a majority of the
employees; the employer seeks to avoid unionization, inasmuch as it
establishes boundaries and impediments to the employer’s full range of
discretion in running its operations; and the board seeks to ensure that a free
choice in such matters is preserved for the employees.
2. Either employees or union organizers can initiate the organizing effort.

Collecting a sufficient number of authorization card signatures, determining
the scope of the proposed bargaining unit, campaigning for employee votes,
and gaining/defeating certification are all crucial aspects of the process.
Charges of unfair labor practices may arise during these various stages, and
their resolution may have an important bearing on the outcome of the
campaign.
3. Even though employees do not give particularly high levels of attention to

the issues raised by either side during the NLRB election campaign, a variety
of forms of communications from both the union and employer typically
characterize such campaigns. The union will try to make contact with every
potential voter, and supervisors will typically be watchful about
developments that may predict the eventual outcome or the leanings of
employee-voters.
4. Research suggests that smaller bargaining units, where employees are more
homogeneous, closer geographically, or better acquainted with each other,
may be easier to organize. On the other hand, though Fossum does not say
so, larger bargaining units may be more resistant to decertification, once the
bargaining unit is first organized.
5. Management activity prior to the actual filing of the petition may be more
efficacious. Unfair labor practices do appear to influence employee-voting
decisions. And well-designed and executed unions campaigns are more
influential on the ultimate outcome as well.
6-1
6. Unions prevail in contested elections about 50% of the time. Many such
elections are conducted in bargaining units with fewer than 30 employees.
Union membership, as a proportion of the workforce, has trended downward
since 1955. This pattern correlates highly with changes in occupational and
industrial distribution of employment.
KEY TERMS
Exclusive representation
Certification election
Authorization card
Multiemployer bargaining
Representation election
Raid election
Appropriate bargaining unit
Community of interests
Decertification election
Craft severance
Recognitional picketing
Accretion
Consent election
Totality of conduct
Board-directed (petition) election
Bargaining order
Regional director
Election bar
Excelsior list
Union-free
Community action
Corporate campaign
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Exclusive Representation
• The concept of exclusive representation establishes a “winner-

takes-all” outcome in representation elections. This requirement,
which contributes to the adversarial relationship that exists between
employers and unions, begins with an organizing campaign.
6-2
Legal Controls
o The organizing process is very adversarial and highly

legalistic.
o Both the employer and the union may wage intense

campaigns. Charges of “unfair labor practices” may be
made by either side, and their resolution is the province
of the National Labor Relations Board (or the Railway
Labor Board, in some industries).
Organizing and Union Effectiveness
• Organizing Creates an Opportunity for Employee “Voice”
• Unionization Creates Something Approximating a Monopoly in the

Supply of Labor
o This monopoly power generally confers a wage premium for

union employees.
o Strong interest in unionization exists where nonunion
competition reduces monopoly power.
o Fossum notes that with increasing globalization of
manufacturing, eliminating nonunion competition has become
virtually impossible in many industries.
• Membership also generates dues flow to the union.
o Large Unions: Economies of Scale in Operations

o Union Effectiveness
o Size
o New Units
o Accreting Expanded Facilities
o Merging and Absorbing Other Unions
6-3
How Organizing Begins
National-level Origins
• Targeting Specific Employers

• Sending in Professional Organizers
o Organizers try to gain employment at targeted firms
o Often occurs where a unionized firm opens a nonunion
plant
o Locally Initiated Attempts
o Typically starts with employees in a firm who
believe they would be better served with union
representation
o On-site employee leader emerges who seeks
assistance from a union
Note: Fig: 6.1 [Sequence of Organizing Events]
The Framework for Organizing
Authorization Card Campaign
• Typically, the first overt action in the organizing process is the

attempt to collect signatures on the authorization cards, such as the
one shown in Figure 6.2 in the text. Fossum notes that it is difficult
to keep the campaign a secret from the employer once this process
has begun.
Note: Fig: 6.2 [Authorization Card]
Recognition Requests
• An employer may voluntarily recognize the apparent majority

support for the union, if presented with signatures or other
forms of support exceeding 50% of the employees in the
proposed bargaining unit.
• However, the employer has the right to refuse to recognize

majority in support of union representation on the basis of a
card count or a petition, even if the union has fully 100% of
the employee signatures. Furthermore, the employer will
generally do so, and for good reason.
6-4
• A union may pressure an employer to recognize its majority

status by recognitional picketing for up to 30 days. Such
picketing cannot continue indefinitely. And if the union fails
in the election or if the picketing lasts for longer than 30 days,
such conduct constitutes an unfair labor practice.
Representation Elections
• Representation elections fall into two categories. A

certification election raises a question of union
representation in a proposed bargaining unit where there is
currently no union bargaining agent. A decertification
election, on the other hand, raises a question whether
currently existing union bargaining agent should have its
authorization rescinded.
• Under very limited circumstances, management may raise a

question about continuing viable union representation. For
example, if a contract expires and no union communication
is received about negotiating a subsequent agreement, or if
the union bargaining agent appears to have become defunct,
management may ask the board to determine whether
representation continues or does not. Such management-
initiated requests, however, must proceed out of objective
reasons supported by specific evidence.
• Fossum states that, “If the majority votes against

representation, the union loses representation rights.” This is
essentially true, but with one technical refinement: the union
is always obliged to demonstrate that a majority supports its
authorization as the exclusive bargaining agent; if either a
certification or decertification election or a management-
initiated election is held (see above), and further if the result
is a tie vote, the union loses its representation rights.
Technically, there would not be a majority of votes against
the union in such a circumstance, but the failure to
demonstrate the support of the majority would suffice to
cost the union its bargaining agent status.
• Decertification elections may not be held while a contract is

in effect.
6-5
• The latter type of representation election is further

subdivided into two categories. The members of the
bargaining unit may wish to return to an unrepresented
status (i.e., no union bargaining agent), or they may wish to
change who their current bargaining agent is to a different
union affiliation. In such raid elections, as they are called,
the alternative union must get the support of 30% of the
same bargaining unit that is currently represented by the
first union, in order to be named on the ballot. But if the
alternative union gets the support of 10% of the bargaining
unit, it may participate as a party of full interest in any
NLRB administrative hearings that may be associated with
questions about the appropriate bargaining unit, challenged
ballots, or any other such procedural matter.
Note: Fig 6.3 [Avenues to Election Petitions]
Election Petitions
• A union, an individual, or (under some cases) an employer

may file a request for a board-supervised election with the
NLRB. Within 48 hours of filing, the union must document
a “showing of interest;” that is, there must be evidence that
at least 30% of the proposed bargaining unit supports the
union as its bargaining agent.
• While the same 30% standard for a showing of interest in

rescinding a bargaining agent’s majority status must also
accompany a petition for a decertification election, the two
types of board-supervised elections are not as symmetrical
in practice as they may first appear.
Preelection Board Involvement
• If there is no disagreement concerning the scope of the

proposed bargaining unit, the Board will schedule a consent
election. If the parties disagree about what the contours of the
appropriate bargaining unit should be, the board regional
director will hold a hearing on the record to make that
determination. When that decision is final, a board-directed
election will be held.
6-6
• Once the election has been scheduled, whether of the consent

or of the board-directed variety, the union is entitled to
receive a list of all employees in the affected bargaining unit,
together with their addresses. This right was established by
the board in the Excelsior Underwear, Inc. case, and is known
in common parlance as an Excelsior list. Whether the
employer does indeed make contact with the employees
individually in this way is irrelevant; it has the option to do
so, and the same option should be available to the union.
Note: Fig 6.4 (NLRB Involvement in Petition to Election]

The Election
• The text indicates that ballots can be challenged by either

side in a board-supervised election, but does not discuss the
mechanics of how such challenges are handled or why they
may be made.
• The NLRB conducts the secret-ballot election. Company and

union observers may challenge voter eligibility but cannot
prohibit anyone from voting. After the votes are counted and
challenges decided, the choice receiving a majority is
declared the winner. If more than two choices are on the
ballot and none obtains an absolute majority, a runoff is held
between the two highest choices. After any challenges are
resolved, the regional director certifies the results.
• The person whose right to vote has been challenged receives

a ballot like everyone else. Upon voting, the individual in
question puts his ballot in an envelope marked “Challenged
Ballot,” and seals the envelope. The person then signs his or
her name across the seal, and the envelope is dropped into
the box. If the total number of challenged ballots would not
be sufficient to change the outcome of the election-that is, if
they are not “determinative of result” in the parlance the
agency--, the election outcome is determined on the basis of
the other ballots. If the total number of challenged ballots
could conceivably reverse the apparent result of the election,
the regional director will hold a hearing on the record in
which the arguments for and against counting each such
challenged ballot will be considered. Those ballots for which
challenges are sustained are set to one side and left
unopened. Those for which the challenges are overruled are
placed on the other side, and initially are unopened.
6-7
Note: Fig 6.5 [Specimen NLRB Ballot]
Bargaining-Unit Determination
The Degree of “Appropriateness”
• An appropriate bargaining unit need not be the most

appropriate bargaining unit. Because the National Labor
Relations (Wagner) Act protects the rights of employees to
have a strong voice in determining their own working
conditions, workers have considerable leeway in defining
just what their community of interest really is. However, as
Fossum points out in the text, several different factors will
bear upon the board’s decision to approve or disallow the
specific contours of the bargaining unit that the workers or
their representative seeks.
• Bargaining units differ depending in part upon whether the

focus is on unit organizing or contract negotiations. Several
retail stores owned by the same employer in a chain may
constitute an appropriate bargaining unit for the purposes
of a representation election. The actual bargaining process,
however, may involve several different employers in what
is known as multiemployer bargaining. (See the text and
the accompanying comment in this Instructor’s Guide for
Chapter 8.)
Legal Constraints
• According to § 9(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, a majority

of professionals must approve being combined with
nonprofessional employees in the same bargaining unit.
• A recognized craft may not be stopped from defining its

own community of interest, even if previously included
in a larger and more comprehensive bargaining unit.
However, NLRB case law has narrowed this possibility
when there has been an established and stable
bargaining history that argues to the contrary.
• Plant guards and security personnel may form a bargaining

unit, but they may not be in the same unit with other types
of employees.
6-8
• Supervisors and managers who meet the definition of

employers within the meaning of this act may not be
included in a bargaining unit or bargain collectively.
However, there is again considerable narrowing of this
exception through case law.
• Fossum notes that the National Mediation Board handles

elections in situations covered by the Railway Labor Act,
and that those cases must by law have bargaining units
determined on a craft basis.
Jurisdiction of the Organizing Union
• The AFL-CIO has traditionally done an excellent job of

mediating disputes which arise when a bargaining unit
represented by an AFL-CIO union seeks to rescind the
authorization of bargaining agency for that union, and via a
three-way election select a different AFL-CIO union as its
new bargaining agent. Since a condition of affiliating with the
AFL-CIO is agreeing to let the Federation resolve internal
disputes, this mediation takes care of the problem in the vast
majority of cases.
The Union’s Desired Unit
• A union must balance its concerns with the prospects of

winning a certification election with a hypothetical bargaining
unit on the one hand, and being successful in negotiating
appropriate contract terms later. Fossum notes that craft
unions are likely to prefer organizing units consisting of
workers with similar skills, whereas industrial unions
generally seek to organize the largest and most comprehensive
range of employees within a given plant or company.
• There are problems associated with organizing a small group

of workers that are rather peripheral to the employer’s
operations: if the union bargained to impasse and called a
strike, the employer could simply subcontract the work,
leaving the union with little leverage. Fossum offers the
example of a custodial bargaining unit in a manufacturing
plant as an example of such a problem area.
6-9
• The twin considerations for a union are that a prospective

organizing opportunity involve a group of workers -
▪ That the union can win; and
▪ That the union will be able to exert some leverage
at the bargaining table on the employer, once the
union is established.
The Employer’s Desired Unit
• The employer generally prefers a unit which the union may

not carry in an election. However, if the union support is so
strong among one group of workers, the employer may
seek to keep that group as small as possible, and confine its
losses to one worker group instead of an entire facility’s
workforce.
• Fossum notes that on one hand, the employer would

generally prefer a set of bargaining units that would each
constitute functionally independent communities of worker
interests. But on the other hand, no employer wants to set
himself up for an uninterrupted cycle of negotiations with a
never-ending series of unions. The potential to be caught in
a sequence of compelling demands to catch up (or
preserve) comparative positions with other groups of
workers can be very difficult to handle.
Note: Fig 6.6 [Conflicting Unit Desires]
NLRB Policy
• Board policy, largely developed through case law, suggests the

following factors receive consideration in the determination of
an appropriate bargaining unit:
o Community of Interests
o Geographic and Physical Proximity
o The Employer’s Administrative or Territorial
Divisions
o Functional Integration of Operations
o The Degree of Interchangeability among Employees
o Bargaining History
o Employee Desires
o Extent of Union Organization
6-10
• Fossum notes many of the above factors are, or at least could

be, interrelated.
Craft Severance
• The NLRB will allow craft severance when all of the following
circumstances apply:
o A high degree of skill or functional differentiation is
present.
o There is only a short bargaining history in the present
arrangement, and the proposed craft severance would
cause minimal disturbance.
o With the established unit, those desiring craft severance
have maintained a distinct separation unto themselves.
o The prevailing patterns in the industry favor such a
craft severance.
o There is a low level of integration associated with the
production function.
o The prospective representative of the craft in question
has a high level of experience in representing such
workers.
What Factors Are Used?
• Additional administrative considerations arise in the health

care sector. However, on balance, the board has made these
determinations on a case-by-case basis, and there has not
been clear consistency.
• Judicial precedents are scanty, in part because NLRB
bargaining unit determinations are not “final orders” and
therefore are subject to appeal as separate matters. If the
employer were dissatisfied with the board’s determination
of the appropriate bargaining unit, it would simply refuse to
bargain after the election outcome were known and let the
courts decide. In most instances, Fossum observes, the
courts have left such board determinations undisturbed in
their oft-cited practice to defer to the expertise of the agency
with initial jurisdiction in such matters.
Other Issues in Unit Determination
• Accretion
• Reorganization and Reclassification
• Successor Organizations
• Joint Employers
6-11
o In the text, it is fairly clear what is meant by the

obligation of the new owners to abide by the
unexpired commitments of their predecessors
following a merger. However, the second case -
that of “an employer who assumes another’s
operations where the employees simply change
employers”- is perhaps not so clear. Fossum cites
NLRB v. Burns International Security Services in
a footnote, but few will perhaps dig out that case
if they are not already familiar with it.
The Organizing Campaign
Before the Organizing Campaign Starts
• Either employees become sufficiently frustrated about

their treatment and economic conditions; or
• A national union identifies the employer as a ripe target

for an organizing effort. Factors considered in the latter
case include:
o The economic and political climate.

o Evidence of employee receptivity to a union
organizing effort.
o Prospects of community support.
o The demography of the potential bargaining unit.
Note: Fig 6.7 [Theoretical Model of the Certification Election

Process]
• For unions, organizing is an ongoing effort. Those who did

not initially sign petitions or authorization cards need to be
won over; new hires that arrive after a union is certified must
be recruited successfully. For management, meeting such an
attempt is more likely to be a sporadic concern. When the
unionization is a prospect, management faces the possibility
of major changes in the way the physical assets as well as
operations may be managed. The national union involved may
have its own agenda, too.
6-12
Employer Size and Elections
• In the last 20 years, over half of all certification elections have

involved prospective bargaining units of less than 30
employees.
• Fossum outlines a calculation that indicates when an

organizing effort begins, the prospective gain for the union in
dollar terms runs to less than $1,500 per year. Employees
remit union dues at the approximate rate of 1.15% of pay, and
typically gain a premium over nonunionized labor of about
10%. Thus, there is generally a favorable cost/benefit ratio for
the employee.
• Very few certification elections take place in private sector

bargaining units of more than 500 employees. This is perhaps
due in part to a saturationist hypothesis - that is, that the most
remunerative bargaining units would have been organized first,
leaving the more marginal ones until this point in the history of
the labor movement. The victory rate for unions in such large
bargaining units is also lower than in smaller ones-- 1/3 versus
1/2 such campaigns are successful.
• Fossum notes that national unions are becoming more

successful in organizing bargaining units outside their
traditional core constituencies, particularly in industries
related to their traditional areas of concentration.
General Organizing Campaign Rules
No-Distribution or -Solicitation Rules
• The text does a good job in noting that solicitation by outsiders

is fundamentally different than solicitation by coworkers on
the premises. Also remote operations may require some
accommodation for outside organizer access, if no other
feasible way to contact workers exists.
• Shopping malls and other facilities that operate as public

thoroughfares are still private property and do not provide
outside organizers with ready rights of access that public
sidewalks and roadways afford.
6-13
• “No Solicitation Rules” do not apply to employees, and are

particularly difficult to ban in nonproduction areas like break
rooms, locker rooms, lunchrooms and the like. Since national
union representatives can be generally denied access to the
plant, support from within the plant is virtually essential for
an organizing drive to succeed.
• Employers may restrict computer communications such as e-

mail and chat rooms to work-related activity and to working
time. And, employers can monitor employee use of such
communication channels more effectively, too. However, here
again, if the employer has been largely indifferent to the use
of computer e-mail for personal reasons in other situations, it
will probably be difficult to restrict such computer use only
when a union organizing effort appears on the horizon.
Communications
• Employers may require employees to attend meetings on company

premises and during working hours to hear presentations opposing
a union’s organizing campaign. However, if the union is barred
from the premises during nonworking time, the union may be
entitled to equal access.
• Employers cannot make unilateral promises of improved wage or

working condition benefits, contingent upon a rejection of the
union at the voting site. The employer may, however, inform the
workforce that if the union is certified, all existing levels of wages
and benefits will be the subject to negotiation.
• The obligation of parties to be entirely truthful in certification

campaigns has been a shifting policy for the NLRB. At
present, outlandish promises are up to the voting employees to
filter out as best they can.
The-24 Hour Rule
• Because claims made on the eve of an election would be difficult

to respond to, the board under its ruling in Peerless Plywood
prohibits both employers and unions from holding any captive
audience presentations with 24 hours of the scheduled time of
any board-supervised elections.
6-14
• Because the union seeking to become the authorized bargaining

agent has no mechanism to compel attendance at its meetings
while the employer does as he/she is paying for the employees’
time, this bar works only against employers for all intents and
purposes.
Interrogation
• Generally speaking, employees involved in an upcoming

bargaining unit election cannot be summoned to executive
offices that are not normally accessible to them, and then
questioned about their views on the ballot question pending.
Such treatment is viewed as inherently intimidating.
• Fossum holds out the possibility that such conduct could be
permissibly utilized to confirm signatures on authorization cards
or otherwise to “test a claim of majority status.” However, the
procedure would be so constrained by the conditions that would
also need to be present, that it is essentially a forbidden practice
in virtually every context.
Surveillance
• Surveillance employers routinely operate a variety of

surveillance equipment to track the security of their premises. If
videotaping is used to record protected concerted activity such as
organizing by employees during break times in nonwork areas,
this would be a ULP.
Union Strategy and Tactics
• The union organizing campaign has three sequential goals:
o Obtaining signed authorization cards from the

majority of workers in the bargaining unit it seeks to
represent;
o Achieving either voluntary recognition from the
employer or a board-directed election; and
o Negotiating, ratifying, and implementing
successfully a first contract.
Note: Table: 6.1 [Percentage Use of Various Union Organizing

Tactics]
6-15
Exhibit 6.1 [Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. V. NLRB]
• Traditional organizing tactics have included handbills, direct

mail, and mass recruiting meetings. In recent years, national
unions have supplemented these traditional methods about a
third of the time with community action efforts and/or corporate
campaigns alluded to supra. Home visits and one-on-one
campaigning are still essential, however. Fossum suggests that
leaflets and cartoons distributed late in the campaign may be
advantageous for the union, since the labor side may legally
speculate on changes they expect following unionization, while
employers may not suggest or pledge future benefits contingent
on rejecting the union; doing so is an unfair labor practice by
management.
Factors Related to Union Success in Organizing
• In bargaining units where women predominate, studies indicate

that face-to-face organizing technique are more successful,
especially where delaying tactics have been employed; and that
opportunities for advancement and technical training become
more germane.
• Minority workers are significantly more likely to favor

unionization.
• Individual organizer characteristics, attention to women’s issues

in bargaining units where women predominate, coworker and
family values about unionization, and beliefs about the union as
an effective instrumentality for achieving attractive outcomes are
also important predictors of voting outcome in board-supervised
elections.
• Within given industries, the success of union campaigns is

related to firm size, capital intensity, the ratio of labor costs to
total costs, and extremes in profitability. In general, large and
unprofitable firms are more likely to be successfully organized.
But as the recent well-orchestrated but unsuccessful effort to
organize Blue Cross-Blue Shield illustrates, employees are not
likely to support unionization without some salient and
compelling issues that galvanize their sentiments.
• Fossum lists a number of other factors which are related to the

prospects of union success at a board-supervised election.
6-16
• If an initial union organizing attempt fails, the union is time-

barred from making another attempt for one year. But when the
time bar has lapsed, unions will often find a rump-organizing
group still in place. Fossum suggests that if a second attempt is
launched, the union campaign will ask whether management
fulfilled its post-election promises to address worker concerns.
Neutrality Pledges and Card Check Agreements
• In companies where some units are already organized, unions

try to negotiate neutrality pledges into the collective bargaining
agreement. Where they are successful, this means that the
employer agrees not to take a position in future organizing
drives by the union within the company.
• In the telecommunications industry, the Communications
Workers has negotiated neutrality agreements with all of the
major regional providers except Qwest, and has card check
agreements with Cingular, SBC, Verizon, and Verizon
Wireless.
• The effect is substantially greater than for neutrality pledges,
because a card check would never be sought before the union
held a majority.
• One study comparing U.S. and Canadian organizing campaigns
found that about 3 to 5 percent of the difference in unionization
between the two countries can be accounted for by the greater
prevalence of card checks leading to voluntary recognition in
Canada.
• Requiring an election instead of allowing card checks enables
the employer to orchestrate an opposition campaign.
Management Strategy and Tactics
• Management opposition to union organizing drives is

predictable; and unless the organizing effort is in the public
sector or in a firm already broadly unionized, the opposition
ranges from weak and indifferent, to hard and vigorous but
carefully clean and lawful, to deliberately a foul of the law.
Resistance can often generate procedural delays, which usually
work in favor of management by sapping worker sentiment for
representation. Thus, employers almost always routinely
challenge the composition of the proposed bargaining unit,
since that alone can introduce appreciable delay. Employers
sometimes intentionally and calculatedly commit unfair labor
practices, since the make-whole relief to which the board is
limited in providing remedy depends upon the filing of an
6-17
• unfair labor practice charge which may never come, and which
in any event would not cost the company any more than they
would have had to pay out in a worst-case scenario had they
abided by all the rules.
• Management is free to campaign vigorously in opposition to

the union’s organizing effort. Figure 6-8 in the text, which
depicts an employer mailing, is in reality quite mild. Posters
and direct mailings which cite the criminal records of key
officials in the union seeking to organize the form’s workers,
salaries and political endorsements of the union officers which
may not sit well with a particular workforce, dues schedules,
and a history of other “special assessments” by the union are
normal practice. A roster of past and current employer
practices which have been implemented without a union
pressing for them is also quite typical, especially if the record
is a strong one.
• Consultants generally suggest that employers engage large-scale

employee communications efforts. First-line supervisors
generally receive extensive briefings on what they may and may
not legally do in communicating with employees in the
proposed bargaining unit. Unless an employee expends a
significant effort to become aware of the union’s position,
chances are he/she will have been exposed more often and in
greater detail to the employer’s position on the organizing
effort.
• Management campaigns against union organization drives

have little effect, especially after the petition for election is
filed. Employees form an early and stable decision about how
they will vote in NLRB-supervised elections.
The Role of the NLRB
• Election Certifications
• Setting Aside Elections
• Bargaining Orders
6-18
The General Shoe Doctrine
• The board seeks to preserve what it called the General Shoe

Doctrine, which it issued in a 1948 decision involving the
General Shoe Corporation. In that case, the board declared that
it had the responsibility “to provide a laboratory in which an
experiment may be conducted, under conditions as nearly ideal
as possible, to determine the uninhibited desires of the
employees.” Students should recognize the importance of this
landmark case and the associated phrasing.
• The board has also established its purview over what it has
termed the “totality of conduct.” Hence, under the decision in
Gissel Packing Co., the board emphasized that it was the
pattern of unfair labor practices, at once both numerous and
flagrant, that the resulting situation warranted the issuance of a
bargaining order without the holding of an election. The
employer’s conduct had so trammeled the employees’ ability
to provide any indication of their true sentiments concerning
union representation, that the board could have no faith in an
election outcome. Instead, it announced, under such
circumstances, it would be guided by other indices to assess
the level of employee support for union representation.
• Rerun Elections
o The board can, and on occasion does, order an election

rerun for irregularities of one kind or another. Unions
do not fare as well in rerun elections as they do the first
time. How much of this pattern is due to the simple
effects of delay, which tend to work against union
election success; and how much to the specific nature
of the rerun election issues, is hard to say.
• The Impact of Board Remedies

o Cease-and-Desist Orders
o Reinstatement With Back Pay Orders
6-19
Election Outcomes
• As previously indicated, over half of all representation elections

occur in units with less than 30 employees.
• Fossum’s discussion of “Election Outcomes” and Table 6.2

should be considered in the context of these ideas.
• Unions prevailed just under half the time in certification

elections, and just under a third of the time in decertification
elections.
• Fossum reports that the annual dues flow to the unions is

greater than the cost of organizing the unit.
Note: Table 6.2 [Union Win Rate by Unit Size, Fiscal 2005]
Other Types of Representation Changes
• While an employer is generally not in a position to question the

continuity of majority status for a bargaining agent, objective
independent evidence (a lack of timely notice to bargain when a
contract is about to expire, low membership, significant changes
in workforce since the bargaining agent established its majority
status, etc.) may contribute to an employer’s desire to clarify
whether a majority favoring union representation continues to
exist. But while the employer can request an NLRB-supervised
representation election under such circumstances, it cannot
unilaterally withdraw recognition of the union’s agency unless
and until an election establishes a lack of majority support.
• If a decertification effort has been launched, it is possible that

another union could supplant an existing one. That is,
employees still want to be represented by a union for purposes
of collective bargaining over wages, hours, and terms of
employment; but they wish that a different union agent be their
representative. Fossum relates that incumbent unions are likely
to prevail in these so-called raid elections where high
unemployment exists, where a large bargaining unit is involved,
and where a local union is affiliated with a national union.
6-20
Contextual Characteristics Related to Election Results
• Fossum notes that unions have a harder time winning a

representation election in a large bargaining unit. Actually, the
relationship between bargaining unit size and representation
election outcomes (which include decertification election
cases) is a bit subtler. Large bargaining units are more robust;
that is, they are harder to convert from one status to another.
Unions have a harder time organizing large bargaining units
successfully and have less success in NLRB-supervised
elections in large units than in small ones. But decertification
efforts have a harder time in larger bargaining units than in
smaller ones. That is, incumbent unions are more likely to win
NLRB-supervised representation elections when a
decertification question is at stake.
Union Characteristics
• Unaffiliated unions win more often than AFL-CIO affiliated

unions.
• Larger and more democratic unions win more often than

smaller, more authoritarian ones.
• Direct benefits to members and lower dues structures seem to

be correlated with union organizing success among white-
collar workers, but these factors are less salient when blue-
collar workers are involved.
• Teamsters generally have lower success rates than do other

unions.
Environmental Characteristics
• Recently high unemployment rates and a high degree of

unionization within a given industry are correlated with union
election victories.
• Union victories are more likely in bargaining units with

workers who possess homogeneous skills.
• State right-to-work laws work against union success in NLRB

elections.
6-21
• Private-sector preferences are correlated with a belief that a

union would be a more effective instrument for changes in
the workplace than reliance upon employer initiatives.
Perceptions of the union’s image and job dissatisfaction also
are factors in the private sector. Public sector employees, on
the other hand, respond more favorably to unions when they
have concerns about job security.
• In the health care sector, nonmedical jobs and nonprofit

religious-affiliation hospitals are correlated with union losses
in NLRB representation elections. While size is generally
negatively correlated with union success in health care as
elsewhere, large size is a favorable correlate for hospitals in
large cities.
Worker Characteristics
• African-American employees have a higher propensity to vote

for unionization than do whites. There is some indication that
Hispanic workers are less likely to vote in favor of union
representation.
• Women are more likely to vote for union representation than

are men.
• While there is some indication that recent immigrants are less

likely to support union representation than are immigrants
with longer histories in the U.S., Fossum cautions that this
may be related to declining unionization rates generally, since
rates for new immigrants appear to track closely the rates for
other new entrants into the labor force.
• Peer and familial attitudes are associated with union election

voting patterns, both pro and con.
• Workers with a Marxist or with a humanistic set of work

beliefs and values are more likely to vote in favor of union
representation.
6-22
First Contracts
After Winning the Election
• Fossum notes that winning a board-supervised election hardly

clears away the union’s path. The board must certify the
election results. Employers may object to any number of
procedural irregularities, especially if the results were close.
These objections and timely appeals take time to resolve, and
time generally erodes the level of union support.
• Resistance may even include the conscious commission of

unfair labor practices, since the penalties for doing so are
generally no more than promising not to do so again.
• While organizing is highly adversarial, successful negotiating

may require accommodation and compromise. Once the
election has concluded, the union needs to adjust its
orientation.
• Fossum citers the S. Lichtenberg case in the text, where an

employer went to extreme lengths to avoid unionization. An
earlier example was the J. P. Stevens Company, which was
also in the textile business.
WEBSITES FOR REFERENCES
www.aflcio.org
www.laboreducator.org
www.nlrb.gov
www.nrtw.org
www.seiu.org
www.changetowin.com
6-23
CASE: GMFC Custom Conveyer Division
The Union Organizing Role
Last year, General Materials and Fabrication Corporation (GMFC) acquired

a manufacturer of custom-built conveyer equipment used in the freight
forwarding industry. The nonunion plant, renamed the Custom Conveyer
Division (CCD), employs about 120 production employees, three
supervisors, a general supervisor, a production manager, two engineers, three
office clericals, and a plant manager. The plant is located in Cumberland, a
small rural city of about 2,500. All the employees are hired from about a 20-
mile radius around the plant. The district director of the United Steelworkers
in the region in which Cumberland is located wants to increase the number of
members in the district. He received an e-mail from Dave Neumeier, an
employee of GMFC-CCD, who is a former Steelworker member. Dave
suggested that CCD was ripe for organizing given the $2 and $5 difference in
wages between CCD ($11 maximum) and GMFC’s main Central City
operation. He said some of the preppers were dissatisfied, too, because their
work was much more repetitive and dirtier than the other jobs but the pay
was the same. Since Dave Neumeier is already an employee, there is little
CCD can do to silence him short of an unfair labor practice. In all likelihood,
the district director will have sent an organizing kit to Neumeier at his home
address in advance of the arrival of Rebecca Shea and Rick Anderson, the
two newest organizers whom the district director assigned to attempt to
organize the plant. Since CCD’s market share is on the rise and the firm is
given to be quite profitable, it would seem likely that employment prospects
are good for Shea and Anderson at the plant. However, the case also suggests
that generally sluggish business activity among the customer base may lead
to a layoff within two months, due to a lack of orders placed. Thus, CCD
may be increasing its share of a declining market.
In any event, if either Shea or Anderson or both can secure employment at

the plant, there will be three who can coordinate the organizing drive. And if
not, at least Neumeier is on the inside for now.
6-24
If the union could learn that layoffs are a possibility in two months in the
absence of a pick-up in orders placed, it is imperative that the organizing
drive begin in earnest before then. For one thing, Neumeier is still
sufficiently recent in his separation from the plant where he was affiliated
with the steel workers that he has been in contact with. If he lacks seniority at
CCD and layoffs come, he could be laid off before any organizing activity
began and the firm could claim ignorance of any organizing plans or activity
involving Neumeier. That would make the organizing task that much more
difficult. It would also diminish Neumeier’s credibility in a small town
environment, making him appear to be a disgruntled employee who was an
outsider to begin with. For all these reasons, the organizing effort should
begin as quickly as possible. If layoffs do in fact occur, those laid off would
still be eligible to vote in a bargaining unit election, unless they had been
terminated. Union activity may provide them with a cloak of insulation
against such a prospect; and if layoffs do materialize, organizers should try to
associate the event with union activity or the costs borne by workers of going
forward without union protection to the degree possible.
Arguably, the targeted bargaining unit should consist of all production

employees, but no others. The three clerical employees are presumably closely
aligned with management, and their small number and limited similarity with
the much larger production staff make their inclusion in the proposed
bargaining unit harder to win and harder to administer if it were won. The first
contact with them would likely tip off the management to the union’s
organizing campaign, and take control of the campaign away from its
organizers. If we may assume that the three clerical workers are women (as is
typically the case), information offered in this chapter suggests that more direct
contact may be needed to bring them on board. And unless two of the three
would vote the union, their inclusion would be an impediment at the margin.
6-25
With a potential bargaining unit of 120, a minimum of 36 (30% of 120)

signatures on authorization cards would be necessary to secure a board-
supervised election. While turnover has been very low, it is at least possible
that some few who signed the cards initially might leave CCD before the
showing of interest is matched against an Excelsior list by the field agent
handling the case in the board’s regional office. Therefore, it will be necessary
to get at least 45 to 55 signatures on cards before bringing the campaign very
far into the open, if at all possible. Neumeier must make a list of those he
believes would be receptive to an overture to sign such an authorization card.
If Shea and Anderson are hired, they can add to the list of eligible names. In a
small town, there should be little difficulty in identifying which people live
where. Although the plant draws from a 20-mile radius, focusing on those
closer to the worksite would be a more efficient use of time. Signing up should
start with the employees most receptive and work down the list, for the most
receptive may also be the ones most likely to become active in the solicitation
process.
A list of arguments should be mapped out with Shea and Anderson as soon
as possible and definitely before any organizing contacts are made.
Arguments would include the disparity between CCD’s wage schedule and
what the same employer is paying elsewhere (copies of wage schedules from
agreements currently in force between the Steelworkers and the parent firm
should be made available in quantity). Also, copies of whatever public
relations material the company itself has put out within the past year should
be included; no doubt the employer has wanted to praise its hard-working
employees for helping it be so profitable after the recent buyout, and in all
likelihood has written letters to the editor of the local weekly paper,
facilitated feature pieces on the new management team and the parent
company. Annual reports and other financial data of the parent firm
(assuming the firm’s stock is publicly traded) should be assembled so as to
help establish the company’s ability to pay more than they do. Toward this
end, the Steelworkers’ district office should be able to do some “number
crunching” and send suitable quotations and campaign ammunition to
Cumberland. Any printing to be done should be out of town, so as to keep
other firms from being untimely leaks of filling the CCD management in on
what is about to happen next.
6-26
Workers may also be approached with the suggestion that signing an

authorization card does mean the individual cannot change his/her mind once
in the voting booth. A strong campaign may be sufficiently unsettling to
management that even if the union does not prevail, the employer may feel it
cannot afford not to improve working conditions and pay rates at least
somewhat. Clearly the firm cannot promise that in advance; but just getting a
board-supervised election may suffice to cause management to pay more
attention to workers’ needs. But to do that, the union will need to get 45 to
55 signed authorization cards at a minimum. While workers do not generally
change their minds about whether to vote for or against union representation
and this approach may seem counterproductive, the first job is to get the
signatures. Once that is accomplished, then the organizing campaign can
focus on getting those who signed authorization cards without much
enthusiasm to take the next step and get those votes locked down.
While the firm may not want to make martyrs out of Neumeier, Shea, or
Anderson, preparation should be made for the possibility that the company
would terminate key people and thus risk unfair labor practice findings and
the attendant adverse publicity, just to quash the organizing campaign. The
district office should have all the paperwork done as much in advance as
possible (the forms are available at no charge from the regional NLRB
office), leaving as few spaces blank as possible. If organizers are hassled and
especially if any newly signed supporters are hassled, the union district office
must be prepared to swing into action right away and demonstrate that these
people have the support of the organization.
Organizers should continue to gather signatures. Picnics, rallies, and other

pep-building activities should be planned and staged, complete with
appealing door prizes, free food and beverages (with an eye toward what
beverages and what levels of moderation in drinking would comport with
prevailing community standards), and so on. Letters to the editor of the local
paper should be part of the campaign, and should be ghostwritten if
necessary. Fill-in-the-blank formats may be distributed, but these should be
returned for retyping by the district office staff or by Shea and Anderson on
scene with word processors so that the letters seem to convey personal
sentiments.
The union should expect delaying tactics by management. Shea, Anderson,

and Neumeier together with district office staff need to keep a mailing
pattern going to keep up morale and to minimize the inevitable erosion of
support for the union in the face of delaying tactics. As the election date
draws near, the names on the Excelsior list should be closely monitored.
People who support the union and who may be on vacation or suspended for
disciplinary reasons must be
6-27
encouraged to vote if at all possible, unless it is quite clear that their sentiments are
antagonistic to the union’s objectives. Those who are members of the
households of managers or executives, while they may find employment in
the proposed bargaining unit, are ineligible to vote. Such individuals as well
as others ineligible to vote should be recognized at the polling place and the
union should be well versed in the procedure to challenge their ballots. The
selection of a polling place observer should be made.
Depending upon the level of support achieved, consideration may be given to

the effect of a strike and picketing (not to exceed 30 days) once the petition
is filed. Other unions that pick up and deliver at the plant should be
approached with a request that they honor the Steelworkers’ picket lines. In
this way, perhaps, the employer will voluntarily recognize the union’s
majority status and will commence bargaining.
Rumor control will be a problem. A branched network for a telephone tree

should be developed. If they are organized correctly, a call started by the
principal organizer to five others should be passed through the tree to all 120
employees in 15 or 20 minutes, with appropriate return loops to make sure
the message content has retained its integrity and that the contacts have all
been made.
Cumberland is a small town, and union organizing orchestrated from the

outside may not sit well with every resident. It is important that union
organizers present themselves as insistent and as leader-like as necessary, but
not in a manner that offends or alienates. Let management be seen as boorish
or mean-spirited; the union should stay active but within the law and within
the parameters of community values.
The Management Role
If there is not a “No Solicitation” rule in force, one should be instituted

immediately, and it should be uniformly and consistently enforced. If the
firm has permitted solicitations before, an announcement should be included
in each employee’s pay envelope indicating that such a practice will no
longer be permitted. Management should apply the policy to its own
solicitations immediately, but if past practice has permitted solicitations for
church suppers, the Little League, Big Brothers Big Sisters, or the Scouts, a
transition period should be allowed to phase in the new policy. During such a
transition period, those who solicit will be informed of the new policy and
will be asked to refrain; they should each be provided with a written and
dated copy of the firm’s new policy in this regard. Such a transition period
should conclude as early as practicable.
6-28
Management needs to ingratiate itself to the local establishment. If Holroyd,

the plant manager and Christian, a supervisor, and other management figures
have not done so before, they need to begin immediately to prepare the
ground for a potentially needed harvest of community goodwill down the
road. Management has learned that Neumeier apparently harbors positive
feelings toward the Steelworkers from the sticker in his toolbox. His
application and background should be scrutinized carefully - where he
worked previously, what kind of worker he was, what kinds of union
activities he was involved with, etc. This is not with a view toward the
commission of any untoward act - just reconnaissance. CCD should continue
to accept applications for work, and all new applicants should be scrutinized
carefully - more so than usual. No new hires should be made of anyone who
is new to the area or about whom detailed background profiles are not
available. A hiring freeze ought to be seriously considered until after CCD
learns whether or not the new orders will be coming in, and would be a
legitimate business reason.
CCD should consider improving its wage package further. If no union

organizing is evident, marginal increases in the hourly wage schedule,
perhaps an additional 25¢ per hour for employees with 36 months or more on
the job, should be given serious consideration. Such a wage increase would
not be an unfair labor practice, if management had no knowledge of a union
organizing effort; and it would provide the company with a very recent
demonstration of its regard and appreciation for its workforce. This increase
would amount to $43,680 per year for the first year (estimating that 70% of
the 120 employees, or 84 workers, would qualify for an additional $10 per
week for a plant that earned more than $1 million last year before taxes).
That would be on the order of a 2% to 2.5% increase in payroll, in all
likelihood far less than the consequences of unionization, even if these
increases were added on top of cost-of-living or other planned increases.
(The average premium for union scale wages across all industries, vis-à-vis
nonunion wages, is about 10%.) Since CCD is already a wage leader in
Cumberland, this might be partially offset by productivity margins associated
with a more selective workforce. And by creating a differential in employees
- those with 36 months of seniority and those without a union pitch that labor
is “all in this together” is somewhat undermined.
The firm might also consider introducing some additional benefits, such as a
very visible but very limited number of $500 scholarships (perhaps five or at
most ten) to employee dependents who were going to be full-time college
students. That amount of money, as a percentage of payroll, would be quite
insignificant; but in a town of only 2,500, the conspicuousness of the awards
would permit the company to take a very public bow for its philanthropy.
6-29
If a campaign did appear to be starting, the employer should immediately

start a series of direct mailings to each employee, extolling its programs and
compensation packages. The firm should highlight its position as a wage
leader in the community and the very low levels of worker dissatisfaction as
suggested by the extremely low turnover rate experienced by the firm. The
dues structure of the union involved should be displayed prominently, and
the upfront initiation fee should be emphasized. What such a dues flow from
the workforce at the Cumberland plant in aggregate means to the community
should be presented - large quantities of dollars have an impact, even when
the payroll is shared by many. The political candidates endorsed by the union
leadership should be made an issue, if they are at odds with voting patterns in
the small town of Cumberland. A recurring theme, pointing out the external
impetus behind the organizing campaign, should be, “Who are these people?
And what do they have in common with YOU?”
Supervisors should receive special preparation about what to look out for, what
to do, and what not to do. A prospective seniority list should be made, if it has
not been made already, and it should be posted. No threats of impending action
are needed, but workers should know long in advance of any layoff, where
they each stand on the seniority list. Layoffs, should they become necessary,
should be made in inverse order of seniority. That will blunt the criticism the
union may try to make. It also insulates the company to some extent if new
employees (e.g., Neumeier, Shea, and Anderson) are laid off for any reason.
Comparative wage rates in the community, to the extent they can be known,
should be posted in conspicuous places around the plant.
The employer should avoid unfair labor practices at all costs. In a small
community, public relations is a major strength, especially for the firm that is
the wage leader and as civic-minded as CCD.
Mass meetings at the plant and hard campaigning on the shop floor should be
avoided also. The direct mailings should continue, however. If the necessary
signatures are obtained to generate a board-supervised election, CCD should
calmly but firmly decline to recognize the union’s assertion of majority
support on the basis of a card count. CCD should also contest the
composition of the proposed bargaining unit; for the same reasons that the
union would probably seek to exclude the three clerical workers in their
proposed bargaining unit, the firm should seek to have them included. The
firm should work for delays whenever it can feasibly do so, inasmuch as
delays erode union support.
6-30
If the firm has avoided the commission of any unfair labor practices, it is its right
to insist on a board-supervised election as the basis for any determination of
the union’s majority status. If striking to force recognition occurs, the
company should be prepared to hire replacement workers. In view of its
position as a wage leader and the moderate size of the workforce, the firm
should be able to do so. Strikers should not be terminated for striking per se;
several very public efforts should be made to invite the valued employees
who have contributed so much to CCD’s success in the past to return to their
jobs. But if they do not return, the firm should be clear that they do not
intend to cease operations, and replacement workers will be considered for
permanent replacement positions. It is important that the firm inform each
replacement worker of the temporary nature of employment, pending the
return of the traditional worker. If temporary replacements become
permanent replacements, then it is important for CCD to advise the
replacement that his/her status has become permanent before advising the
striker of that fact. Strikers can be replaced, and subsequently terminated if
“redundant” to the needs of the employer. But the employer may not
discharge the striker BEFORE hiring the replacement, or else the board will
deem the discharge to have come in retaliation for the strike activity, and that
would be an unfair labor practice. Offers of permanent replacement to
temporary workers should be made only after a worker has failed to respond
to any of three specific and personal invitations that he/she return to work.
Replaced strikers should be notified by registered mail, and they should be
replaced in inverse order of seniority with no consideration given to union
roles whatsoever. The form letter should be carefully worded, and it should
make redundancy - not striking or any other concerted or union affiliated
activity - the only basis for the very reluctantly reached replacement
decision.
If an election is held, replacement workers as well as those whom they have

replaced are entitled to vote. (Strikers can vote in such cases for one year.)
Nevertheless, workers who were notified of their termination should be
routinely challenged as arguably ineligible to vote. The necessary hearing on
the record will cause additional delays. If the union prevails after all this -
and do recall that unions win just under half of all certification elections - the
firm should begin to bargain as hard as possible. The employer should seek
wage concessions that would bring its wage structure back in line with other
area employers of workers with similar skills. Certification does not mean
the union will stay on, and workers may well decide that union
representation was a bad idea and seek decertification at the one-year
anniversary of the certification of the bargaining agent.
6-31
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
terminated the old monarchy, and for four hundred years threw
everything into confusion. But, what we are concerned with, is the
fact that in the reign of this king and his successor, the Nile rose, on
an average, twenty-four feet above the level to which it rises now.
Here, then, are two witnesses, Nature and Man. The coincidence
of their testimony is as clear and complete as it is undesigned. It
may, therefore, be accepted as an undoubted fact, that the Nile is
now flowing from Semnéh to Silsiléh at a level lower by at least
twenty-four feet than it did at the date of the inscriptions. Nature says
there was a time when it rose at least twenty-seven feet higher than
at present, for at that height it deposited alluvium. There is no
discrepancy in these three additional feet, though there would have
been something like a discrepancy had Nature indicated three feet
less than the markings.
The only question for us to consider is, how this was brought
about. It could have been brought about only in one way, and that
was by the river deepening its channel. As far down as Silsiléh it had
been flowing at a higher level. Here there must have been a
cataract, or an actual cascade. Whatever the form of the obstruction,
the stream carried it away. And so, again and again, working
backwards, it ate out for itself a deeper channel all the way up to
Semnéh. This is just how the Niagara river is dealing with its
channel. It has undertaken the big job of deepening it, from Lake
Ontario to Lake Erie, down to the level of Ontario. The stone it has to
work in is very hard and compact. It has now done about half the
work, and every one sees that it will eventually complete it. All that is
required is time. The River Colorado, we are told, runs for six
hundred miles of its course in a canon, a mile in perpendicular depth,
all cut through rock, and some of it granitic.
This is what the Nile did in the historic period for at least two
hundred miles of its course. It planed down this part of its channel to
a lower level, to what may be called the level of Egypt. Why should it
not have done precisely the same work in the prehistoric period for,
in round numbers, the four hundred miles from Silsiléh to Cairo, that
is to say, for the whole valley of Egypt? That is just what I believe it
did. Of course, there were aboriginal facilities which decided it upon
taking that course. There may also have been greater depressions in
some places than in others. There was harder work here, and lighter
work there. The planing was carried on rapidly in one district, and
slowly in another. But I believe that, after making whatever
deductions may be thought proper for aboriginal depressions, it is
safe to conclude that the valley of Egypt was, in the main, cut out by
the Nile. It did not begin to obtain its abrading power after the reign
of Amenemha III.
There may have been a cataract once at Cairo. When this was
carried away, another must have been developed somewhere above
its site, and so on backwards all the way to Silsiléh, where we are
sure that there was once something of the kind. In a still remoter
past the river may not have come as far north as Cairo, but may
have passed through the Faioum, or by the Natron Lakes, into the
desert. This is a question which, to some degree, admits of
investigation.
The river would not always be bearing on the same side of the
valley. A little change in any part of the channel, and which might
result from any one of a variety of causes, would deflect its course. It
is so with all rivers. These causes are always everywhere at work.
The river would thus be always shifting from one side of the valley to
the other; and, impinging in turn on the opposite bounding hills,
would always be widening the valley.
The number of side canals, especially the Bahr Jusuf, which,
throughout almost the whole length of the valley, is a second Nile,
running parallel to the original river, must, during the historical
period, by lessening the volume of water in the main channel, have
very much lessened its power of shifting its course. But every one
who voyages on the Nile will become aware that this power is still
very great. He will often hear, and see, large portions of the
incoherent bank falling into the water. In many places he will observe
the fresh face of recent landslips. On the summit of these slips he
will occasionally have presented to him interior sections of some of
the houses of a village which is being carried away by the stream.
On the fresh faces of recent slips I often observed that the
stratification was unconformable, and irregular. This indicated that
the sand and mud out of which the alluvium had been formed, had
not been deposited at the bottom of a quiet lake-like inundation, but
must have been formed at the bottom of a running stream, precisely
in the same way as the sand-banks and mud-banks of the existing
channel are always at the present time being formed. This irregular
stratification is just what we might expect to find in the alluvium of a
valley through which runs a mighty river, always restlessly shifting its
channel to the right, or to the left.
To experts in geology there will be but little, or nothing, new in the
above given account of the process, by which the Nile formed Egypt.
All river valleys have been formed, more or less, by the action of
running water. It is, however, interesting both to those who are
familiar, and to those who are not, with such investigations, to trace
out the steps of the process, in such a manner as to be able to
construct a connected view of as many of its details as can be
recovered. In any case this would be interesting; but here it has an
exceptional, and quite peculiar, interest, for it enables us to picture to
the mind’s eye how the whole of the most historical country in the
world was formed by the most historical river in the world—a
physical operation, on which much that man has achieved, and,
indeed, on which what man is himself at this day, very largely
depended. Pictures of this kind are only one among the many helpful
contributions, which science can now make to history.
I was not in Egypt during the time of the inundation; I can,
therefore, only repeat on the authority of others, that for the first few
days it has a green tint. This is supposed to be caused by the first
rush of the descending torrents sweeping off a great deal of stagnant
water from the distant interior of Darfour. This green Nile is held to
be unwholesome, and the natives prepare themselves for it by
storing up, in anticipation, what water they will require for these few
days. The green is succeeded by a red tint. This is caused by the
surface washing of districts where the soil is red. The red water,
though heavily charged with soil, is not unwholesome. With respect
to the amount of red in the colour of the water of the inundation, I
found it stated in a work which is sometimes quoted as an authority
on Egyptian subjects, that it is so great that the water might be
mistaken for blood. This I do not understand, as the soil this water
leaves behind has in its colour no trace of red. By the time the water
of the inundation reaches the Delta, it has got rid of the greater part
of its impurities. This causes the rise of the land in the Delta to be far
slower than in Upper Egypt. In winter, when the inundation has
completely subsided, the water, though still charged with mud, in
which, however, there is no trace of red, is pleasant to drink, and
quite innocuous. The old Egyptians represented in their wall-
paintings these three conditions of the river by green, red, and blue
water.
For myriads of years this mighty river has been bringing down
from the highlands of Abyssinia and Central Africa its freight of fertile
soil, the sole means of life, and of all that embellished life, to those
who invented letters, and built Karnak. It is still as bountiful as ever it
was of old to the people who now dwell upon its banks; but to what
poor account do they turn its bounty! How great is the contrast
between the wretchedness this bounty now maintains, and the
splendour, the wealth, the arts, the intellectual and moral life it
maintained four and five thousand years ago!
The Egyptians have a saying, with which, I think, most of those
who have travelled in Egypt will agree, that he who has once drunk
the water of the Nile will wish to drink it again.
CHAPTER II.
HOW IN EGYPT NATURE AFFECTED MAN.
Continuo has leges, æternaque fœdera certis

Imposuit natura locis, quo tempore primum
Deucalion vacuum lapides jactavit in orbem.—Virgil.
The physical features, and peculiarities of a country are one of the

starting-points in the history of its people. If we do not provide
ourselves with a knowledge of these matters before we commence
our investigation of what the people were, and did, the character of
the people, and of the events is sure very soon to make us feel the
want of it. It is so in a higher degree with the history of the Egyptians,
than with that of any other people. They were, emphatically, a people
that stood alone; and the peculiarities of the people were the direct
result of the peculiarities of the country.
Its environment by the desert gave it that security, which alone in
early days could have enabled nascent civilization to germinate and
grow. It possessed also a soil and climate which allowed its
inhabitants to devote themselves to some variety of employments
and pursuits, and so prevented their being all tied down to the single
task of producing food. The absence of these two great natural
advantages elsewhere placed insurmountable difficulties in the way
of advancement in other parts of the world, so long as the arts by
which man battles with nature were few, and feeble; and the
organization of society in consequence only rudimentary. So was it,
for instance, in Europe, at the time when Egypt was at the zenith of
its greatness; where, too, for long centuries afterwards, nothing
could have been done without the aid of slavery, which alone made
mental culture possible for the few at the cost of the degradation and
misery of the many. Egypt was differently circumstanced. There one
man might produce food sufficient for many. The rest, therefore,
could devote themselves to other employments, which might tend, in
different ways, to relieve man’s estate, and embellish life. In this
matter the river and the climate were their helpers. The river
manured with an annual warp, irrigated, cleaned, and softened the
land; and the climate, working harmoniously with the river, made the
operations of agriculture easy, speedy, certain, and very productive.
What in other countries, and in later times, the slow advances in arts,
and knowledge, and in social organization, as the successive steps
became possible, brought about for their respective inhabitants,
Nature did, in a great measure at once, and from the first, for the
Egyptians.
Another of the early hindrances to advancement arose out of the
difficulties of communication, which prevented either a military force
from maintaining itself away from home, or a single governing mind
from acting at a distance. Of course in matters of this kind the effects
of the want of sufficient means of communication are greatly
aggravated by the want of foresight, and the distrust men have in
each other, which belong to such times and circumstances. Nothing
but the organization of tribes and cities can be accomplished then.
Egypt, however, had advantages in the great and varied gifts of
nature to which our attention is now directed, which enabled her, in
some remote prehistoric period, to emerge from this politically
embryonic condition, and to form a well-ordered and homogeneous
state, embracing a population of several millions, who were in
possession of many of the elements of wealth and power, and had
attained to a condition that would suggest, and encourage culture. Of
these advantages, that which came next in order to the soil and
climate, was that its good fortune had conferred upon it a ready-
made means of communication, absolutely complete and perfect; no
part of the country, either in the valley of Egypt, or in the Delta, being
more than a few miles distant from one of the most easily navigable
rivers in the world.
And that nothing might be wanting, this advantage was equalised
to all by a provision of nature that, at a certain season of the year,
the descending current of the river should, for the purposes of
navigation, be overbalanced by a long prevalence of northerly winds;
thus giving every facility, by self-acting agencies, to both the up and
the down traffic.
I may also observe that the river ran precisely in that direction in
which it could serve most effectually as a bond of union, by serving
most largely as a channel of commerce. If its course had been along
the same parallel of latitude, that is, from East to West, or reversely,
then throughout its whole length the productions of its banks would
have been the same. It would, therefore, have been of little use as a
means of commercial interchange. Where there was no variety of
productions there would have been no commodities to exchange.
But as its course was in the direction of a parallel of longitude, its
stream offered a highway for the exchange of the varying products of
the different degrees of latitude it passed through. This difference in
the direction of their courses already constitutes a vast difference in
the comparative utility of the streams of the Amazon and of the
Mississippi; and must ensure to them very dissimilar futures.
Another of the provisions that had been made for the early
progress of the country was something quite unique: there was not
by nature, and there could not be constructed by man, a single
strong place in the whole of Egypt, such as would enable powerful
and ambitious individuals, or malcontent factions of the people, to
maintain themselves in independence of the rest of the community,
or to defy the government. Nature had supplied no such places, and
the conditions of the country were such that they could not be
formed. This is a point which involves so much that I will return to it
presently.
It ought not to be unnoticed here, for it is one of the important
peculiarities of the country, that Egypt yields both a winter and a
summer harvest. The overflow of the river, and the warmth of the
winter sun suffice for the former, which consists of the produce of
temperate regions; and artificial irrigation for the latter, which
consists of the produce of the tropics. This gives it the advantage of
the climates of two zones; the one temperate and the other tropical;
for, though it lies to the north of the tropic, its winter, by reason of its
environment by the heat-accumulating desert, resembles our
summer, and its summer, for the same reason, that of the tropics.
Egypt is thus enabled to exceed all other countries in the variety of
its produce. Both its wheat and its cotton are grown beneath its
palms. This variety of produce ought to contribute largely to the
wealth, and well-being of a country; and it was, we know, a very
considerable ingredient in the greatness of the Egypt of the
Pharaohs.
The characteristics of surrounding nature had corresponding
effects on the ideas, too, and sentiments of the ancient Egyptians.
We may, for instance, be absolutely certain that had they lived in an
Alpine country, although they might have had the power of
commanding the requisite materials on easier terms, they never
would have built the Pyramids, for then an Egyptian Pyramid would
have been but a pigmy monument by the side of nature’s Pyramids.
But as these structures stood in Egypt, when seen from the
neighbourhood of Memphis and Heliopolis, and throughout that level
district of country, they went beyond nature. There they were
veritable mountains; and that is what the word means. There were
no other such mountains to be seen. In that was their motive. Man
had entered into rivalry with nature, and had outdone nature.
So was it with one instance. And so was it on the whole, generally.
The guise in which nature presented herself to the eye of the
Egyptian was grand and simple. Nature to him meant the broad
beneficent river; the green plain; the naked bounding ridge on the
right hand, and on the left; upon, and beyond these the lifeless,
colourless desert; above, the azure depth traversed by the unveiled
sun by day, and illumined with the gleaming host of heaven by night.
Here were just five grand natural objects, and there were no more.
We rehabilitating to our mind’s eye the scene, must add a sixth, the
orderly, busy, thronging community itself. But to them these five
objects were all nature. No dark forests of ancient oak, and pine; no
jutting headlands; no island-sown seas; no hills watered from above,
nor springs running among the hills; no cattle upon a thousand hills;
no shady valleys; no smoking mountains. Just five grand objects;
everywhere just the same, and nothing else. Their thoughts and
sentiments could only have been a reflection of nature (their mind as
a glass reflected nature), and of the instincts which the form of
society nature had imposed upon them gave rise to. And their acts
could only have been the embodiment of their thoughts and
sentiments, which must needs have been in harmony with
surrounding nature. And hence the character of the people, which
was grand and simple; but withal sensibly hard, somewhat rigid and
formal, without much tenderness, and with little geniality; solid,
grave, and serious.
Under such circumstances the individual was nothing. There could
be no Homeric Chieftains; no Tribunes of the people; no
eccentricities of genius. The community was an organism, of which
every member had his special functions and purpose; a well-ordered
machine which did much work, and did it smoothly.
This complete organization of society—it was what the gifts and
arrangements of nature had enabled them to attain to—had brought
them face to face with the ideas of law and justice. But under their
form of society—and it has not been different under other forms the
world has since seen—it was understood that some laws, which
were necessary, were not good, and that justice did not rule
absolutely. We see—it shows itself in all that they did—that their
minds were too thorough, and logical, to rest satisfied under these
contradictions; they therefore worked out for themselves to its
legitimate, and complete development the old Aryan thought of a life
beyond this present existence: this was that western world of theirs,
in which no law would be bad, and in which there would be no
miscarriage of justice. And thus it came to be that their doctrine of a
future life was the apotheosis of their social ideas of law, and justice,
and right.
And nature encouraged them in this belief. Every day they saw the
sun expire in the western boundary of the solid world; and the next
morning rise again to life. They saw also the mighty river always
moving on to annihilation in the great sea, just as the sun sank every
evening into the desert: but still it was not annihilated. Its being was
lost, and was recovered, at every moment. It was ever dying, but
equally it was ever living. These two great phenomena of nature
(through our increased knowledge they teach other lessons now)
aided the idea which the working of society was making distinct in
their apprehension, and confirmed them in the belief of their own
immortality. With the Egyptian also death would not be the end: the
renewal he beheld in the sun, and in the river, would not fail himself.
The complete organization of the whole population had been
rendered possible by the peculiar advantages of the country. The
enterprising among the Pharaohs availing themselves of this
complete organization, and of these peculiar advantages, were
thereby enabled to command the whole resources of Egypt, and to
wield the whole community at their will, as if it had been but one
man.
I reserved for separate and fuller consideration the point that
nature had nowhere provided Egypt with a single spot where the
ambitious, the discontented, or the oppressed could maintain
themselves; or to which, we may add, they could even secede. In
this respect also, Egypt is quite unique. The configuration of the
country, combined with the absence of rain, brought about this
peculiarity. The valley of Egypt, speaking roundly, is five hundred
miles long, and five miles wide, with a broad navigable river flowing
through the midst of it. The Government will always be in possession
of the river. It follows then that before the disaffected can be drawn
together in formidable numbers at any rendezvous—for the
distances they would have to traverse would not admit of this—the
Government will be able to send troops by the river in sufficient force
to disperse them; or, at all events, to prevent their receiving
reinforcements.
A second reason is, that these handfuls of isolated insurgents
must always remain within reach of the Government troops sent
against them. They would not be able to withdraw themselves from
the flat, open banks of the river; for there is nowhere vantage ground
they could occupy, except in the desert; and there in twenty-four
hours, that is before they could be starved, they would by thirst be
reduced to submission. For, from the absence of rain, there are no
springs on the high ground; and from the same cause the nitre
accumulates in the soil to such a degree, as to render the well-water
brackish, and unfit for drinking.
A third reason is the dependence of the agriculture of Egypt on
irrigation. The people, therefore, in any neighbourhood cannot
intermit their attention to their shadoofs and canals for the purpose of
insurrection, or for any other purpose whatsoever. Were they to do
so starvation would ensue. The Government also, being in
possession of the river, could at any moment stop the irrigation, by
destroying the shadoofs and canals, of a malcontent district.
Here, then, are three reasons, any one of which would, singly, be
sufficient to make the Government in Egypt omnipotent. What
conceivable chance, then, can the people have, when all the three
are, at all times, combined against them? This explains much in the
past and present history of the country. Nature had decided that in it
there should be no strongholds for petty potentates, no castles for
freebooters, no mountain fastnesses for untameable tribes, no
difficult districts to harbour insurgent bands; no possibility of getting
away from the bank of the river; no possibility of withdrawing
attention, for a time, from the most artificial of all forms of agriculture.
For long ages the wandering Arab of the desert was the only
possible disturber of the peace of this exceptional country. Nature
first gave to it, in its singular endowments, the means of union; and
then eliminated those physical obstacles to its realization which,
elsewhere, for long ages proved insurmountable. The point to be
particularly noted here is, that these circumstances have ever given
to the Government for the time being every natural facility for uniting
the whole country into a single State, and ruling it despotically.
The Delta is no exception, for the branches of the river, and the
canals by which this whole district is permeated, and the absence of
defensible positions, reduce it, in respect to the points I have been
speaking of, to the same condition as that of the long narrow valley
above it.
A time may come when the moral force of public opinion will
outweigh, and overmatch these natural facilities for establishing, and
working a despotism; but there is no indication in the existing
condition of the country of such a time being at hand. And that this is
the only force that can be of any effect in such a country is
demonstrated by its history. In the remote days of its greatness there
was in some sort a substitute for it in the priestly municipal
aristocracy, or oligarchy, of each city. The priests were the governing
class, and supplied the magistracy. They were an united and
powerful body. Wealth, religion, knowledge, the habitual deference of
the people, made them strong. They thus became, to some
considerable extent, a bulwark, behind which, in each separate city,
some of the rights of person and of property could find protection
from the arbitrary caprices of despotism. In this way something that
was in the mind of man was at that time counterworking the
consequences of physical arrangements: and this only is the way in
which a country so circumstanced can be helped in the future.
Nothing, however, of this kind is now at work in modern Egypt. It
has, therefore, but one ground for the hope of escaping from the
despotism which so heavily oppresses it, and that is in the chance of
external aid, which means the chance that some European power
should assume the protectorate of the country. It must, however, be
a power in which public opinion is in favour of liberty and political
justice, and in which the economical value of security for person and
property is understood. The Egyptians themselves desire such a
consummation. They know how blessed to them would be the day
which should relieve them from the grinding and senseless exactions
of an oriental taskmaster, and place them under the sway of good
and equal laws. Their wish is that this beneficent protector should be
England. They almost expect that it will be. I was asked, why do you
not come and take possession of the country? In Egypt this appears
the natural conclusion of existing conditions. But a protectorate
carried out thoroughly, and unflinchingly, and entirely for Egyptian
objects, would be far better for both parties than simple English
possession. If we were to make a gain by ruling the country, we
should always be tempted to go a little further. We should find it very
difficult to stop at any particular point, or to be clean-handed at all,
when everything was in our power.
The motives for interference are strong. How saddening is it to the
traveller to see the poor good-natured Fellah, his naked limbs
scorched by the blazing sun, baling up the water from the river,
during the livelong day, for his little plot of ground; and to think that
all that will be left to him of its produce will be barely enough to keep
himself, and his little ones, in millet-bread and onions; all the rest
having been cruelly swept away to support at Cairo unused, and
unuseable, palaces and regiments, and to make a Suez Canal for
the furtherance of the policy of France, but for the naval and
commercial benefit of England, and to build sugar-factories for a
trading Khedivé. Of what benefit to the wretched cultivator are all the
bounties of Egyptian nature, and all his own heavy moil and toil?
This is one of the remorseless, and purposeless oppressions done
under the sun, which it would be well that some modern Hercules
should arise in his might, and in his hatred of such heartless and
stupid injustice, to beat down, and make a full end of. An Egypt, in
which every man might reap securely the fruit of his labour, would be
a new thing in the world, and a very pleasant thing to look upon. At
present, the riches of Egypt mean wealth without measure for one
man, and poverty without measure for all the rest of the world.
The case of the poor Fellah is very hard: so also is that of his
palm-tree. It came into existence, and grew up to maturity under
great difficulties. It was hardly worth while to give it space and water,
and to fence it round in its early days; for so soon as it could bear a
bunch of fruit, it was to be taxed. Why, then, should the oppressed
villager go to the cost of rearing it? He would be only toiling for a
domestic despot, or foreign bond-holder. How many a palm-tree that
might now be helping to shade a village, and beneath which the
children might be playing, and the elders sitting, has by this hard and
irrational impost, been prevented from coming into being. And of all
the gifts of nature to Egypt, this palm-tree is one of the most
characteristic, and of the most useful: its trunk supplies the people
with beams; its sap is made into a spirit; its fruit is in some districts a
most useful article of food, and everywhere a humble luxury; baskets
are made of the flag of its leaf, and from the stem of the leaf beds,
chairs, and boxes; its fibres supply materials for ropes and cordage,
nets and mats; it has, too, its history in Egypt, for its shaft and crown,
first suggested to the dwellers on the banks of the Nile, in some
remote age, the pillar and its capital. A wise ruler, whether his
wisdom was that of the head, or of the heart, would do everything in
his power to induce his people to multiply, throughout the land, what
is so highly useful, and in so many ways. But the plan despotic
wisdom adopts is to kill the bird that lays the golden egg, and by a
process which shall at the same time cause as few as possible of the
precious kind to be reared for the future.
Every traveller in the valley of the Nile, who can think and feel,
finds his pleasure, at the sight of the graceful form of this beneficent
tree, clouded by the unwelcome recollection of the barbarous and
death-dealing tax that is laid upon it.
If, when the Turkish empire falls to pieces, England should shrink
from undertaking, on her own sole responsibility, the protectorate of
Egypt, the great powers of Europe, together with the United States of
America, might, as far as Egypt is concerned, assume the lapsed
suzerainty of the Porte, and become the protectors of Egypt
conjointly.
CHAPTER III.
WHO WERE THE EGYPTIANS?
Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius.
What were the origin and affinities of the ancient Egyptians? To

what race, or races, of mankind did they belong? At what time,
whence, and by what route did they enter Egypt? The answer to
these questions, if attainable, would not be barren.
We have just been looking at the physical characteristics of the
country, and noting some of the effects they must have had on the
character and history of the people. The inquiry now indicated, if
carried to a successful issue, will enable us, furthermore, to
understand, to some extent, what were the aboriginal aptitudes the
people themselves brought with them. These were the moral and
intellectual elements on which the influences of nature had to act.
The result was the old Egyptian. He was afterwards modified by
events and circumstances, by increasing knowledge, and by the
laws and customs all these led to; but the two conditions we are now
speaking of were the starting-points, and which never ceased to
have much influence in making this people feel as they felt, and
enabling them to do what they did. To have acquired, therefore,
some knowledge about them will be to have got possession of some
of the materials that are indispensable for reconstructing the idea of
old Egypt. We feel with respect to these old historical peoples as we
do about a machine: we are not satisfied at being told that it has
done such or such a piece of work; we also want to know what it is
within it, which enabled it to do the work—what is its construction,
and what its motive power.
Six thousand years before our own time may be taken as the
starting-point of the monumental and traditional history of the old
monarchy. This inquiry, however, will carry us back to a far more
remote past.
There is but one way of treating this question: that is, to apply to it
the method we apply to any question of science—to that, for
instance, of gravitation, or to any other: precisely the same method
applied in precisely the same way. We must collect the phenomena;
and the hypothesis which explains and accounts for them all is the
true one. This will act exclusively: in establishing itself it will render
all others impossible.
Other hypotheses, however, which have been, or may be,
entertained must not be passed by unnoticed, in order that it may be
understood that they do not account for the phenomena; or, to put it
reversely, that the phenomena contradict them.
When history begins to dawn, the first object the light strikes upon,
and which for a long time alone rears its form above the general
gloom, is the civilization of Egypt. It stands in isolation, like a solitary
palm by the side of a desert spring. It is also like that palm in being a
complete organism, and in producing abundance of good fruit. All
around is absolute desert, or the desert sparsely marked with the
useless forms of desert life. On inquiry we find that this thoroughly-
organized civilization, fully supplied with all the necessaries, and
many of the embellishments of life, and which is alone visible in the
dawning light, must have existed through ages long prior to the
dawn. It recedes into unfathomable depths of time far beyond the
monuments and traditions.
Some salient particulars at once arrest our attention. The people,
though African by situation, do not, at first sight, strike us as
possessing, preponderantly, African affinities. If there be any, they
are not so much moral, or intellectual, as physical. They appear to
be more akin to the inhabitants of the neighbouring Arabian
peninsula, from which there is a road into Egypt. But here also the
resemblances are not great: even that of language is far from
conclusive. Their complexion, too, is fairer. On neither side is there
any suspicion, or tradition of kindred. There is even deep antipathy
between the two. Their religion, again, and religion is the summa
philosophia—the outcome of all the knowledge, physical and moral,
of a people, is unlike that of their neighbours. The Greeks, however,
and this is worthy of remark, thought it only another form of their
own. They were laborious, skilful, and successful agriculturists; and
there was no record of a time when it had been otherwise with them.
They were great builders. They had always practised the ordinary
arts of life, spinning and weaving, metallurgy, pottery, tanning, and
carpentering. They had always had tools and music. They had a
learned and powerful priesthood. Their form of government was that
of a monarchy supported by privileged classes, or of an aristocracy
headed by a king, and resting on a broad basis of slavery, and a kind
of serfdom. Their social order was that of castes.
We cannot ascertain precisely at what point in the valley this
civilization first showed, or established itself. Of two points, however,
which are of importance, we are sure. It did not descend the Nile
from Ethiopia, and it did not ascend it from the coast of the Delta. It
is true that Memphis was the first great centre of Egyptian life of
which we have full and accurate knowledge. The founder, however,
of the first historical dynasty, and who appears to have made
Memphis his capital, came from This, or Abydos, in Upper Egypt. We
may almost infer from this that Abydos was an earlier centre of
Egyptian power than Memphis.
The idea, then, of an unmixed African origin may, I think, be at
once and summarily dismissed.
Something may be alleged in support of a Semitic origin. Where,
however, we may ask, is the theory on behalf of which nothing can
be alleged? If it were so it would never have come into existence.
What we have to consider in this, as in every doubtful or disputed
matter, is not what can be said in favour of certain views, or what can
be said against them, but which way the balance inclines when the
arguments on each side have been fairly put into their respective
scales.
To begin, then, with the language, which is the most obvious
ground for forming an opinion in a matter of this kind. It happens that
in this case nothing conclusive can be inferred from the language.
First, because in it no very decisive Semitic affinities have been
made out; and, secondly, because, had they been found to be much
more important than some have supposed them to be, this would not
of itself prove a preponderance of Semitic blood.
Colour is rather adverse to the Semitic theory. The Egyptian was
not so swarthy as the Arab; whereas, if he had been a Semite, he
ought to have been, at the least, as dark. In the wall-paintings a clear
red represents the complexion of the men, and a clear pale yellow
that of the women. In this clearness of tint we miss the swartness of
the Arab.
It is true he was darker than the Jew. Little, however, can be
inferred from this, for the Jews were an extremely mixed people.
Abraham came from Haran, in Mesopotamia, and is called in
Deuteronomy a Syrian. He must, in fact, have been a Chaldean. The
wife of Joseph was a high-caste Egyptian. The wife of Moses was a
Cushite. And when the Israelites went up out of Egypt ‘a mixed
multitude’ went out with them. This can only mean that in the
multitude of those who threw in their lot with them there was a great
deal of Semitic blood, through the remnant of the Hyksos, which had
been left behind when the great mass of that people had been
expelled from Egypt, and also a great deal of Egyptian blood. From
these sources, then, were derived no inconsiderable ingredients for
the formation of what was afterwards the Jewish nation. The great-
grandmother of David was a Moabitish woman. Solomon’s mother
was a Hittite, and one of his wives an Egyptian. And we know that a
very considerable proportion of conquered Canaanites were
eventually absorbed by their conquerors. No argument, therefore,
can be founded upon the complexion of so mixed a people as the
Jews.
In features, taking the sculptures and paintings for our authority,
the Egyptian was not a Semite. His nostrils and lips were not so thin,
and his nose was not so prominent. In this particular, which is
important, he presents indications of a cross between the Caucasian
and the Ethiopian, or modern Nubian.
Their social and political organization—that of castes, and of a
well-ordered, far-extended state—was completely opposed to
Semitic freedom and equality, in which the ideas of the tribe, and of
the individual, preponderated over those of the state, and of classes.
Religion is the interpretation of the ensemble. It takes cognizance
of the powers that are behind, or within, visible external nature, and
of the reciprocal relations between these powers and man. The mind
of man is the interpreter. As is the interpreter so will be the
interpretation.
Now, from the hard simplicity of nature in the Semitic region, or
from the simplicity of life and thought resulting from it, or from the
early apprehension by that part of the human family of the idea of a
Creator, or from other causes not yet made out (though, indeed, it is
the fact, and not the cause, that we are now concerned with), there
has always been a disposition in the Semitic mind to think of God as
one. In the earliest indications we possess of their religious thought
each tribe, each city, almost each family, appears to have had its
own God. They never could have created, or accepted, a Pantheon.
The idea of Polytheism was unnatural, illogical, repulsive to them.
The inference, therefore, is that in the large hierarchy of heaven,
which approved itself to the Egyptian mind, there could be nothing
Semitic. The religion, the religious thought of Egypt, which so stirred
the whole heart, and swayed the whole being of the people as to
impel them to raise to the glory of their gods the grandest temples
the world has ever seen, was, in its whole cast and character, an
abomination to the Semite.
Next after Religion, the most important effort of the human mind is
Law. Law is distinguishable from Religion. It is not an effort to
embrace and interpret the whole, but a general and enforced
application of some of the conclusions of that interpretation to the
regulation of the conduct of men towards each other. Its principles
are those of justice and expediency, but with very considerable
limitations—not absolute justice, but justice as then and there
understood; and not in every point and particular, but in those
matters only in which evidence is possible, and the observance also
of which can be enforced by penalties; nor absolute expediency, but
again, as it is then and there understood, and limited to such matters
as admit of being carried out, and enforced, by public authority.
This, it is plain, may be regarded—and as a matter of observation
and history is still, and has in all times been, regarded—either as
something distinct from, or as a department of, religion.
If treated as a part of religion, then either the very letter itself of the
law, or else the principles on which it is founded, and of which it is an
application, must be accepted as from God. In the former case God
is regarded as the actual legislator, and sometimes going a step
further, as the actual executor of His own law. In the latter case He is
regarded, because He is the primary source, at all events, of its
principles, as ultimately their guardian, and the avenger of their
violation.
The Semitic sentiment, looked upon law in the former of these two
lights. It formed this conception of it, because the people held in their
minds the two ideas, that God was One, and that He was the
Creator. A people who have come to regard God as one will
necessarily concentrate on the idea of God all moral and intellectual
attributes. Out of this will arise a tendency to exclude all merely
animal attributes, and, to a great extent, such phenomena as present
themselves to the thought as merely human—such, for instance, as
were the attributes of Mars, Venus, and Mercury. God then, being
the perfection of wisdom, justice, and goodness, is the only source of
law. He is, also, the actual Lawgiver in right of His being the Creator.
The world, and all that it contains, is His. His will is the law of His
creation. The gods of Egypt, however, like those of Greece, were not
anterior to Nature, were not the creators of Nature, but came in
subsequently to it, and were in some sort emanations from it; the
highest conception of them, in this relation, was that they were the
powers of Nature.
Now, in this important and governing matter of law, the Egyptian
mind did not take the Semitic view. God appeared to the Egyptian,
not so much in the character of the direct originator, as in that of the
ultimate guardian of the law, in our sense of these words. They had

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Labor Relations Development Structure

Process 10th Edition John Fossum

UNION ORGANIZING CAMPAIGNS

1. Organizing is a complex activity involving unions, employers, and the

2. Either employees or union organizers can initiate the organizing effort.

3. Even though employees do not give particularly high levels of attention to

• The concept of exclusive representation establishes a “winner-

o The organizing process is very adversarial and highly

o Both the employer and the union may wage intense

Organizing and Union Effectiveness

• Organizing Creates an Opportunity for Employee “Voice”

• Unionization Creates Something Approximating a Monopoly in the

o This monopoly power generally confers a wage premium for

• Membership also generates dues flow to the union.

o Large Unions: Economies of Scale in Operations

How Organizing Begins

• Targeting Specific Employers

The Framework for Organizing

Authorization Card Campaign

• Typically, the first overt action in the organizing process is the

Note: Fig: 6.2 [Authorization Card]

• An employer may voluntarily recognize the apparent majority

• However, the employer has the right to refuse to recognize

• A union may pressure an employer to recognize its majority

• Representation elections fall into two categories. A

• Under very limited circumstances, management may raise a

• Fossum states that, “If the majority votes against

• Decertification elections may not be held while a contract is

• The latter type of representation election is further

Note: Fig 6.3 [Avenues to Election Petitions]

• A union, an individual, or (under some cases) an employer

• While the same 30% standard for a showing of interest in

Preelection Board Involvement

• If there is no disagreement concerning the scope of the

• Once the election has been scheduled, whether of the consent

Note: Fig 6.4 (NLRB Involvement in Petition to Election]

• The text indicates that ballots can be challenged by either

• The NLRB conducts the secret-ballot election. Company and

• The person whose right to vote has been challenged receives

Note: Fig 6.5 [Specimen NLRB Ballot]

The Degree of “Appropriateness”

• An appropriate bargaining unit need not be the most

• Bargaining units differ depending in part upon whether the

• According to § 9(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, a majority

• A recognized craft may not be stopped from defining its

• Plant guards and security personnel may form a bargaining

• Supervisors and managers who meet the definition of

• Fossum notes that the National Mediation Board handles

Jurisdiction of the Organizing Union

• The AFL-CIO has traditionally done an excellent job of

The Union’s Desired Unit

• A union must balance its concerns with the prospects of

• There are problems associated with organizing a small group

• The twin considerations for a union are that a prospective

The Employer’s Desired Unit

• The employer generally prefers a unit which the union may

• Fossum notes that on one hand, the employer would

Note: Fig 6.6 [Conflicting Unit Desires]

• Board policy, largely developed through case law, suggests the

• Fossum notes many of the above factors are, or at least could

What Factors Are Used?

• Additional administrative considerations arise in the health

Other Issues in Unit Determination