The Employee Free Choice Act (“EFCA”) essentially dispenses with secret ballot union elections. Not so long ago, many of EFCA’s current supporters held a much different view of secret ballot elections. In a joint brief to the National Labor Relations Board in Levitz Furniture the UAW and the AFL-CIO stated:

…other means of decision-making are not comparable to the privacy and independence of the voting booth, and the secret ballot election system provides the surest means of avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressures and not individual decisions.

Everyone’s entitled to a change of mind. Perhaps EFCA supporters now believe that card check is a reliable gauge of union sentiment. But if that’s the case, why doesn’t EFCA provide for card check to decertify (i.e., get rid of) a union?

Under EFCA, the decertification process would still require a secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB. If secret ballot elections are necessary to decertify unions, why aren’t they necessary to certify unions?