Here’s one you may not have heard about yet. Buried in the last 100 pages or so of the 600+ page CARES Act, the Covid-19 bill the Senate passed this morning, I found this nugget:
(X) that the recipient will remain neutral in any union organizing effort for the term of the loan.
For the lawyers reading this, the provision appears in Title IV, Section 4003(c)(3)(D).
The requirement appears to be applicable to loans made to businesses with between 500 and 10,000 employees. The quoted provision appears in a list of items that an “eligible borrower” must provide a “good-faith certification” of in connection with an application for a loan under the program. What the required certification to “remain neutral” actually means is unclear.
This is not the only union-related requirement. A loan recipient is required to give a similar certification that it will not “abrogate existing collective bargaining agreements” during the term of the loan and for a period of two years after completing repayment of the loan.
Labor professionals will certainly want to take note of these provisions. If the employer seeks a loan under the applicable program, there could be some clear implications for labor relations strategy, whether or not the employer is unionized.