In the 1990s, in contrast, few North American labor leaders or their academic friends would dispute that Canadian labor policy governing certification promotes unionization and collective bargaining to a far greater extent than its US counterpart. My paper analyzes the development of labor policy on state certification of bargaining representatives in the US and Canada during the crucial formative years 1933-1959, and explains why many Canadian labor advocates wanted the US certification system in the 1940s and 1950s, but forty years later resist any attempts to introduce US-style certification elections at the national or provincial levels.

The paper analyzes why the NLRB "voluntarily" abandoned authorization cards as a regular means of certifying workers' bargaining representatives in 1939, examines how employers' organizations influenced and responded to NLRB decisions, court rulings, and congressional statutes defining certification policy, and evaluates the impact of these policy changes on unions' declining success rates in NLRB-supervised elections. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Canadian labor movement lobbied persistently, but unsuccessfully, for the adoption of a Wagner-style certification policy. Much to the consternation of the Canadian labor leaders, national and provincial labor boards required that, prior to certification, unions demonstrate that a majority of workers in designated bargaining units were "members in good standing," or that unions win the support of a majority of eligible voters in secret ballot elections. In the postwar decades, labor leaders criticized the Canadian law's emphasis on extensive documentary evidence of union membership and its high requirements of support during elections. Today, Canadian unions adamantly defend certification based on union membership cards and Canadian law's tough legal sanctions against employer interference during election campaigns.

Comment: Christopher L. Tomlins, American Bar Foundation