By Richard Hankins, Kilpatrick Stockton Labor Attorney

Once a powerful force in American culture, labor leaders now seem perfectly content simply playing the role of victim. To hear the supporters of organized labor talk, the sole reason for steadily declining membership has been illegal opposition by employers. I spent all day Thursday listening to proponents of the Employee Free Choice Act insist that there are millions of people who want to join a labor union but are simply too abused and mistreated by greedy and overbearing corporate managers to be able to express that desire.

Isn’t it fair to at least consider whether there are other reasons for the decline? Because in the world I live in, most companies have better things to do than conspire to violate the rights of their employees. Cruel and unethical management teams don’t last very long. Is it not possible that the reason most employees today reject unions is that they believe their employers are doing a pretty good job of balancing the interests of customers, employees, and shareholders?

This is a story of one such company.

In Atlanta early Friday morning, a bus carrying the Ohio-based Bluffton University baseball team plunged off an overpass and landed 16 feet below, killing six people and seriously injuring many others. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s excellent coverage poignantly describes this unimaginable tragedy. 

Buried among the heart-wrenching descriptions of the agony being experienced by the players and their families is a brief mention that AirTran Airways offered free flights and even a charter plane to bring those families from Ohio to Atlanta to be with their loved ones. Some people might say that the cost of a $50,000 charter is a drop in the bucket for AirTran. Those people wouldn’t know a thing about the airline business.

Companies like AirTran know that doing the right thing for communities is good for business. Likewise, those companies know that doing the right things for their employees is good for productivity and loyalty.

In 2005, 2,353 AirTran customer service, ramp and reservations agents voted in a secret ballot election conducted under the procedures of the Railway Labor Act.  Only 36% of the employees voted for the union. Were the other 64% coerced? Were they afraid that the company that showed such heart to strangers would fire it’s own employees just for supporting a union? Of course not. After hearing both sides, those employees decided that their company’s leaders were already doing the right things for all stakeholders.

Say what you will about today’s corporate leadership, but one has to admit that they are very smart people. If those leaders believed that unions were good for business, the doors would open wide. Likewise, when employees believe that a union is in their best interest, no amount of employer coercion can impact the mark they put on a secret ballot.

When unions don’t get an invitation to the party, perhaps they should re-examine the value proposition they are offering in today’s workplaces instead of playing the role of victim.