Georgia is likely to see through the union charade and push through the protection workers deserve. Other states should follow suit.
Georgia is likely to see through the union charade and push through the protection workers deserve. Other states should follow suit.
T he United Auto Workers’ endorsement of Joe Biden’s reelection was in large part payback for the president’s efforts to help organize southern automakers. The Biden administration has issued a slew of policies that will enable the UAW to make inroads at factories that have repeatedly rejected union representation. Most notably and recently, in its Cemex decision last August, the National Labor Relations Board made it easier for unions to ignore workplace elections while publicly intimidating workers into supporting unionization.
Georgia is going in the opposite direction, putting workers’ rights ahead of union demands. It’s on the verge of enacting a law that would guarantee secret-ballot elections at automakers and parts manufacturers. The Peach State’s pending reform should spread nationwide.
Georgia, like many southern states, is fast becoming an automaking hub. Kia, Hyundai, and Rivian have announced plans to build major factories there, while battery companies and suppliers are also flocking to the state. The state is giving significant economic-development incentives to many of these companies, helping them set up shop with taxpayer support. If lawmakers are going to offer special support for select companies, they can simultaneously protect workers’ right to a secret ballot.
Federal law allows unions to organize companies using “card check,” by which union organizers urge workers to sign cards — often in a public setting — indicating their support for unionization. While companies can reject card check and request a secret-ballot election, which would give workers the freedom to vote in private, there’s no guarantee that they will, especially in the face of union and media opposition.
States can’t change federal labor law, but they can attach conditions to their own taxpayer funding. Georgia governor Brian Kemp supports a law that would require companies that receive state incentives to hold secret-ballot elections. The state senate passed a bill to that effect on February 8; the house is likely to shortly follow suit. Kemp and state lawmakers are putting workers first.
Former organizers have described going to workers’ homes to browbeat them into submission. They know that, given card check, fear compels many workers to support a union they would otherwise oppose. Unions know that Georgia’s coming reform would hurt their ability to coerce workers. They’re arguing that federal law blocks states from attaching conditions to state incentives. Yet unions don’t really believe their argument, since they do the exact same thing to tilt the scales in their favor.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has shown how unions have pushed blue cities to attach “labor peace agreements” to financial assistance for companies. Such agreements typically require companies to recognize card check and not request secret-ballot elections. They can also force companies to profess “neutrality” — preventing them from talking to their employees about what would happen if they organize — and give unions access to their workplaces. These conditions give unions an unfair advantage. Georgia’s proposed reform would merely level the playing field for workers.
These facts notwithstanding, unions and their media allies are disparaging Georgia’s reform effort as illegal, implying that they’ll sue the state if it enacts the law. These claims are designed to give house members second thoughts, but lawmakers needn’t worry. Unions would be devastated by such a lawsuit: If they somehow wrongly convince federal courts to overrule Georgia’s proposed reforms, they’ll undermine the basis of their own labor peace agreements in blue jurisdictions.
Georgia is likely to see through the union charade and push through the protection workers deserve. Other states should follow suit, especially the southern states that are fast becoming hubs for manufacturing of both electric vehicles and traditional automobiles. United Auto Workers has made organizing these factories its top priority of the 21st century. The union is more likely to succeed if it’s allowed to intimidate workers through card check. Yet workers are the ones who deserve to succeed, and if more states protect workers’ right to a secret ballot, they’ll continue to rise and thrive.
State Representative Will Wade (R.) represents Georgia’s District 9 and is Governor Kemp’s floor leader in the Georgia house of representatives. F. Vincent Vernuccio is the president of the Institute for the American Worker and a senior fellow at the Workers for Opportunity initiative at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.