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Argument: Employee Free Choice Act eliminates workers' right to secret ballots
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Supporting quotations
Heritage Foundation's argument against the EFCA - "The Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of their right to a private-ballot vote...Congress should instead protect the privacy of American workers and guarantee their right to vote in an election before joining a union."
Stephen Cabot. "Employee Free Choice Act Puts A Target On The Back Of Manufacturers". Industry Weekly. 16 Oct. 2008 - The current law permits a company to choose voluntarily to let its workers be represented by a union if more than 50% of those workers sign authorization cards. Under the Kennedy proposal, however, if the same numbers prevailed, the company would be required to grant union representation to its workers.
Unlike secret ballot elections, authorization cards are signed in the presence of a pro-union employee or a union organizer. NLRB supervision would be unnecessary. Such a situation obviously lends itself to coercion of one form or another. In our long careers of representing management in all facets of labor relations, we have witnessed many instances of organizers threatening workers and of pro-union workers exerting all kinds of pressure, subtle and not so subtle, to get employees to sign authorization cards. There have been slashed tires, anonymous threatening phone calls, social ostracization, direct threats of physical violence, and many other coercive acts. The average worker will go along to get along. When there is a secret ballot, however, workers will be able to vote their consciences, not be intimidated by those who want them to act as told.
James Sherk and Paul Kersey. "How the Employee Free Choice Act Takes Away Workers' Rights". Heritage Foundation. 23 Apr. 2007 - Does a ballot cast in private or a card signed in public better reveal a worker's true preference about whether to join a union? A private vote is the obvious answer, but organized labor has nonetheless made the misleadingly named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, H.R. 800) its highest legislative priority.
Recently, unions have switched the focus of their organizing operations from private balloting to publicly signed cards. These so-called card-check campaigns make it much easier for unions to organize workers, but most companies strongly resist the idea of denying their employees a vote. Unions now want the government to take away workers' right to vote and certify unions after only a card-check campaign. The Employee Free Choice Act would do this and more.
First, it requires the National Labor Relations Board to certify a union after a majority of a firm's workers has signed union cards, putting an end to almost all organizing elections: "if the [National Labor Relations] Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations...the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization."[1]
[...]The Case Against Card Check
America's labor laws are grounded in the principle that workers should have the freedom to decide whether to bargain collectively with their employers. The law protects workers from retaliation for deciding to join or to reject a union. A company must recognize a union supported by a majority of its workers and may not recognize a union that lacks majority support.
Under current law, union organizers can request an organizing election once 30 percent of a company's workers sign union authorization cards in a "card check."[4] This constitutes a "showing of interest," and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) then orders that a secret-ballot election be held. These elections usually take place 39 days after the NLRB receives the cards.[5] Unions win about 60 percent of these certification elections.[6] Once the NLRB certifies the union as the employees' exclusive representative, the employer and the union begin negotiating a collective bargaining agreement. Through a process of mutual give and take, the two sides reach an agreement over wages and working conditions.
A company may choose to recognize a union that the NLRB has not certified if the union's organizers present union cards signed by a majority of the company's workers. Unions find it much easier to sign up workers when workers' choices are made in public. However, as the Supreme Court affirmed in NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co. (1969), publicly signed cards are "inherently unreliable," and a company may always request a private vote to confirm that its employees actually want to unionize. Companies usually insist on giving their workers the privacy of the voting booth and refuse to recognize unions without an election.
Fundamental Right to Vote in Privacy. The misleadingly named Employee Free Choice Act would end this system. The act would require companies to recognize a union without a private election once organizers submit union cards signed by a majority of workers in a company. This effectively replaces private organizing ballots with publicly signed cards.
Abolishing elections deprives workers of a fundamental democratic right. Elections guarantee that all workers can express their views on whether they want to belong to a union. Under card check, however, workers who have not been contacted by union organizers have no say in whether their workplace organizes. If organizers collect cards from a majority of workers, all workers must join the union without a vote.
Equally important, a democratic election with private ballots ensures that all workers can express their desires without fear of social stigma or retribution. With a private ballot, no one else knows how any individual worker voted, and workers can express their intentions without outside pressure. For these reasons, the government protects the right of all Americans to vote for elected officials in private. American workers have the same right, and it should not be taken away because it impedes union organizing. [see article for extended analysis].
Kyle Trygstad. "The Employee Free Choice Act". Real Clear Politics. 26 Aug. 2008 - Beneath all the rhetoric about restoring balance, fixing the middle class and giving working the chance to unionize is this simple fact: The ironically named Employee Free Choice Act would actually take away workers' right to secret ballots. In its place there would be what is known as a card check, which is simply a card a worker signs -- in front of everyone -- voicing their desire to unionize.
Of course if you can't understand why any worker wouldn't want to unionize, then card check simply expedites the process by doing away with bygone conventions like a secret ballot. If, however, you think that there could be some workers out there who don't want to unionize, but might just be a little afraid to publicly state this in front of their pro-union buddies, then doing away with the secret ballot is nothing less than stripping them of their rights. It's too bad that those in favor of card check like Whitney have to hide what it really is.
"The Employee Free Choice Act - A senate primer". The Union Free Employer. 21 Mar. 2007 - "the E.F.C.A. will eliminate the current guarantee of a free and democratic, government-supervised secret-ballot election for employees to decide whether or not to be represented by a union."
