This just doesn’t sound right no matter how you slice it: Unions striking secret deals with employers.

When it comes to workers, there’s plenty of secrecy to go around at the companies they work for. So, you’d figure a union would be all about transparency.

Not today. Two of the nation’s biggest unions, the Service Employees International Union, known as SEIU, and Unite Here, have been engaged in striking back-room deals with employers. I’m serious folks. You can’t make this stuff up.

There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal looking at the secret pacts.

Two of the nation’s largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.Two of the nation’s largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.

The agreements are raising questions about union transparency and workers’ rights. A summary document put together by the unions says it is critical to the success of the partnership “that we honor the confidentiality and not publicly disclose the existence of these agreements.” That includes not disclosing them to union members.

I don’t know about you, but if a union were representing me I’d want everything disclosed.

This move seems like the last gasp of a dying labor movement in this country that has seen membership plummet.

One union, the SEIU, has actually been gaining members. I write about that often. But if this is the way they are swelling their ranks then maybe they should rethink their tactics.

Some labor experts also see it as an unnerving development:

The secret deals, says Gary Chaison, professor of Industrial Relations at Clark University, “are very worrisome and some unions, particularly SEIU, seem to specialize in them. What I see are unions attempting to strike a balance between organizing new members and representing them. Often, unions find that they have to do special deals with employers in order to gain neutrality and special arrangements, like membership card counts instead of elections, as a way to prove majority support and achieve status as bargaining agent. But here’s the conflict. Secret deals to gain status as bargaining agent runs counter to the unions’ roles as bargaining agent, when they have to be open and transparent organizations.”

This seems obvious, no? What are we missing here?

In the Journal piece the unions defend their tactics:

The SEIU’s president, Andy Stern, said the unions sought the agreements after realizing that traditional organizing campaigns at individual sites were proving ineffective. “The old ways aren’t working, and we’re trying to find different relationships with employers that guarantee workers a voice,” he said. He dismissed the idea that the new agreements are undemocratic. “These workers have no unions; that’s where we start from,” he said.

and…

The agreements have “resulted in tens of thousands of workers getting unions” and been a major advance for the labor movement, said the president of Unite Here, Bruce Raynor.

He defended keeping them confidential, saying the companies involved insisted on that for competitive reasons.

This excuse has been used again and again by executives in the business world. Having a union official using it as a reason to keep deals secret from workers makes me feel like I’m in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Chaison offers a gloomy scenario:

“Is this the beginning of the end of the labor movement? I think a strong case could be made that secret deals (along with the loss of political clout and the concessionary bargaining (wage cuts and freezes) that has become some common for example in the auto and airline industries, does mark a beginning of an end….that unions have loss so much influence and power in the world of work in which they recruit members and bargaining, that they find themselves moving apart from the members and making special deals with employers. The final decline of American labor unions will be marked not only by intense opposition from employers but a workers’ loss of faith in need for and effectiveness of unionism and in their unions as organizations controlled by workers. Once workers see unions as making special secret deals, workers’ will no longer feel attached to their unions, and the rejection of unionism at nonunion workplaces will increase and fewer workers will be willing to strike or participate in union administration and governance. Hence, unions will lose their greatest resource…the energy and support of their members.”

It’s something unions have been losing for years. But are these desperate measures for desperate times too desperate?