Unions support ambush elections because they know the less time an employee has to get educated about unions the better their chances of winning. We both already knew that. But this data blew me away.

Our crack team at LRI RightNow ran the numbers, and they even surprised me. This chart shows the actual win rates of unions in elections since 2004. These are sorted by the number of days from petition to election (yes, even under the old rules the NLRB sometimes conducts elections quickly). If you compare the short elections to those ran under the normal target range (36-42 days) you see that the union win rate jumps almost 30%. No wonder unions have pushed so hard for the ambush election rule.

Stay tuned over the next several weeks for our complete Ambush Election Game Plan. Your strategy from today forward is to get your days back. Here are the three first things you can do to get started:

• Forward this chart to everyone in your company. This is what you are up against starting April 14th. If you are having trouble getting people to pay attention to this change hopefully this will help.
• Make sure your campaign toolbox is "ambush ready" today. If you don’t already have our Campaign in the Cloud package (we’ve installed more of these in the last two weeks than ever) now is the time. Your site includes every campaign communication (presentations, speaker notes, training material, video content, handouts, flyers, checklists, etc.) you need from the first whisper of union cardsigning through the 25th hour speech. We are constantly updating these sites and if you haven’t seen one in a while you should check one out. Unlike all the other tools being offered out there these are specifically designed for an ambush election environment. They are constantly updated, union-specific, and can change on the fly (whether you have 10 days, 21 days or a month, all the tools flex for your situation). You don’t pay a big monthly fee to keep access to these tools – you buy them once and they’re yours.
• Conduct early warning training now. Make sure your supervisors are ready for the new ambush election environment. Check out our new Tripwire 2015 training. Even if your company conducted Tripwire training before this is also completely redesigned for the ambush election world. In the new environment what used to be considered early warning signs (and what everyone else still trains leaders to look out for) aren’t early warning at all. You can download an excerpt from the new training to get a feel for how this “Left of Boom” training is different from any other “early warning” training you’ve ever seen.

Again, stay tuned for our complete Game Plan in a couple of weeks. In the meantime check out Campaign in the Cloud and Tripwire 2015. You’ll be glad you did.

PS. I note the irony of taking an additional 500 words to tell the story of a picture already worth 1000 words. Give me a break - I’m a lawyer.