Beightol Quoted in Bloomberg Law News Article, “Bipartisan Bill to Accelerate Labor Contracts Roils Employers”

A bipartisan bill aimed at speeding up labor negotiations has employers on edge that pro-union legislation is gaining momentum in the Republican controlled Congress.

The Faster Labor Contracts Act (H.R. 5408) passed the House in June with 20 Republicans voting in favor. If approved by the Senate, the union-backed bill would impose strict bargaining timelines and could send parties to binding arbitration if they don’t reach an agreement within 120 days of negotiations.

The bill has faced intense opposition from the business community, which has argued that the legislation would unconstitutionally impose terms and conditions of employment without any kind of ratification vote or management sign off.

Business groups including the Chamber of Commerce and the CHRO Association have come out in full force against the bill.

The legislation would require employers to begin negotiating within 10 days of a union’s request to begin bargaining, and if no agreement is reached within 90 days the parties would be referred to mediation. If the parties still failed to reach an agreement after another 30 days, they would go to an arbitration panel that would have authority to impose a binding two-year contract.

Employers said the timelines set in the bill are unrealistic and would lead to an influx of arbitration that could impose significant legal costs and uncertainty on management and unions. Currently, it takes an average of about 463 days for a newly organized bargaining unit to ratify a first contract, according to an analysis of Bloomberg Law union data.

For companies with workforces unionizing for the first time, parties would have to negotiate all of the terms and conditions of employment from scratch — a process that takes much longer than the 120 days set out in the bill, according to Scott Beightol, a partner at Michael Best & Friedrich LLP.

To read the entire article, visit Bloomberg Law News