Card Check Is How the South Got Organized

A union just organized a bus manufacturer across three states — including deep-red Alabama and Kentucky — and the mechanism wasn’t a string of elections. It was one agreement.

Per Labor Notes, the Communications Workers organized roughly 1,400 New Flyer workers in Alabama, Kentucky, and upstate New York, then folded them into a national master contract alongside the company’s existing Minnesota plants.

Here’s how. New Flyer signed a neutrality agreement: management pledged not to oppose the union and to recognize it by card check — signed authorization cards, not a secret-ballot election — once a majority signed up. The company also agreed to interest arbitration, meaning an arbitrator would settle any final bargaining differences and impose a first contract.

That combination is the whole ballgame. Employers who enter neutrality agreements end up union nearly 90% of the time. Card check plus guaranteed arbitration strips out the two things that slow organizing most: the election campaign and the years-long first-contract stall that has stymied unions at places like Starbucks and Amazon.

In exchange, the union agreed to: no strikes, no picketing, no public criticism of the company for five years.

The other lever worth noting: customers. Transit agencies buy these buses, and a nonprofit plus L.A. County sued over wage and hiring-equity promises tied to $500 million in orders. Procurement pressure became organizing pressure.

To me, the lesson for employers isn’t outrage — it’s recognition. Card-check neutrality deals are the most effective organizing tool going, and they’re increasingly extracted through customers and government buyers, not just across the bargaining table.

If you sell to public agencies, your labor strategy and your sales strategy are now the same conversation.