Small business owners face the big issues just as often as big businesses, so coming to grips with the ever-evolving human resource landscape requires frequent training. At a seminar last week, two experts spoke about expected changes that could create challenges.
The Employee Free Choice Act, winding its way through Congress at the moment, and immigration-related bills before the R.I. General Assembly are both expected to affect local employers, said Carrie Beers, manager of the human resources consultant group at USI New England, which sponsored a seminar on legal issues last Wednesday in Warwick.
William E. O’Gara, a lawyer with Pannone Lopes & Devereaux LLC in Providence, said there are “a host of recent court decisions and legislative changes” on the horizon that many small employers will have to tackle, but many “don’t have the level of expertise they would like to have, simply because they don’t have the resources.”
The Employee Free Choice Act, which was co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langevin, would eliminate the need for workers to vote on whether to unionize if the majority of a business’s work force signs union authorization cards and they are validated by the National Labor Relations Board.
Previously, if at least 30 percent of employees signed cards, it would initiate a vote on whether to form a union. The bill would also set stiff penalties for employer interference and provide for binding arbitration if a contract dispute occurs – similar to how such situations are handled in the public sector with police and firefighters.
While the AFL-CIO says this will counter the “management-controlled election process,” O’Gara said it could make things much more difficult for employers because unions would be easier, and cheaper, to organize, and employers won’t have a chance to campaign against them before an election.
“[Currently] the employer has an opportunity to campaign … and the union and the employer get to make their case,” he said. “This act, if enacted – and it’s got a good shot depending on who wins the White House next year – eliminates the election process. … That is a dramatic change.”
The Bush administration opposes this legislation, but it has already passed in the House of Representatives, and it is scheduled for a vote in the Senate this month.
In the General Assembly, Beers told the 47 USI clients who attended the session, bills are being considered that would make the federal Basic Pilot electronic employment verification system, currently a voluntary program, a requirement for all businesses.
The Web-based system, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, allows employers to verify the employment eligibility of all new hires online, but Beers raised concerns about small companies that do not use computers and their ability to comply.
“We’re seeing a push in about 25 states” to make the program mandatory, Beers said. In Rhode Island, there are bills in both the House and the Senate that would apply the law not only to for-profit employers, but also to nonprofits.
But there are questions, too, about the ability of the government to implement its end of the program. Currently only 13,000 businesses nationwide participate, and even now the program has been unable to provide “accurate and timely” responses, Beers said.
“I just don’t know if Homeland Security if ready for the amount of volume that would come in for verification,” Beers said.
