In a time when unions are outraged with Democrats for their pro-immigration policies, big labor has launched an unprecedented lobbying campaign to force workers into unions. Labor unions are supposed to protect workers’ rights, yet union bosses want Congress to pass a law that actually robs workers of their democratic right to a private ballot.
In March, the House kowtowed to the unions and passed the so-called “Employer Free Choice Act.” Today the battle comes to the floor of the Senate. Union bosses will learn that the Senate isn’t going to roll over so easily.
I was a card-carrying member of the AFL-CIO Metal Lather union in my youth, and I understand the role that unions can play. But unionization is increasingly facing organizing challenges. Unions have seen a steady decline in membership, from 16.1 percent in 1990 to 12 percent in 2006. Right now they’re less interested in seriously defending workers’ rights than they are about simply holding onto their power. It seems obvious that big labor wants to rebuild its membership rolls — and its bank account — through a forced unionization process called “card check.”
What is card check and why is it so bad? The bill now before Congress would overturn a 72-year law that guarantees workers the right to cast private ballots in union organizing elections. Card check has always been an option, if employers voluntarily choose to recognize a union that way. But this bill mandates the recognition of a labor union as the exclusive employee representative if only 50 percent plus one of the workers signs a card expressing interest in a union. It’s automatic. No discussion, no hearing from both sides on the issue, no election.
What about the views of the other 49 percent? It’s very likely they would not even know an election is taking place. Union organizers only have to solicit cards in secret until they achieve a majority. That’s not a free and fair election. By voting in union-organizing elections, you are consulted about a decision that will require you to pay potentially thousands of dollars a year in union dues and may require you to support union actions, including strikes. Yet under this so-called “Employee Free Choice Act,” it is possible for nearly half of the workers to have no voice at all.
This isn’t about workers’ rights. This is about intimidation. Consider the pressure you would be under to sign a card if your coworkers asked. Workers and their families can be harassed at home, at church, at the shopping mall. A former union organizer testified before the House Education and Labor Committee that many workers “signed the card simply to get the organizer to leave their home and not harass them further.” Pressure often escalates to include threatening phone calls, vandalism, stalking, and even violence. In one 2004 case, a worker in High Point, North Carolina, who dared to oppose the United Auto Workers’ card check campaign, needed 24-hour security posted at his home.
The only protection workers have to exercise their freedom in union elections is the private ballot. A choice made under duress is no choice at all — it’s coercion.
A private ballot allows workers to make a decision without the union organizers, coworkers, or the employer looking over their shoulder. An employer wouldn’t know if you voted for the union, and the union wouldn’t know if you voted against the union.
Ironically, the bill’s supporters agree that secret ballot elections for unionization are a good thing — in Mexico! In August 2001, eleven cosponsors of the House card-check bill sent a letter to the Mexican government urging the adoption of secret-ballot elections as a basic right for Mexican workers for the very reasons we should protect this right here in America. Go figure.
Let’s be very clear that no one is denying the right of workers to organize unions. Unions, in fact, won more than half of the federally supervised organizing elections held in the last year. The right to join a union by secret ballot is time-honored. It is a right I exercised when I chose to be a card-carrying member.
But the right to decide by private ballot is fundamental in our democracy. Without it, union organizing is just legal conscription.
The Senate must stand up for American workers by defeating this bill.
– Orrin G. Hatch is the senior Senator for Utah and a former chairman of what is now called the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.