Employees of the huge chicken company, Tyson, voted to reject representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers union. More than two-thirds of the 800-plus hourly production and maintenance workers decided that union representation would not be in their best interest. Organizers have been trying to unionize Tyson's workers since 1971, when representation by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters was rejected by 78% of the workforce.

Workers have continually rejected offers of union representation because Tyson treats its workers with dignity and pays them a fair and reasonable wage.

It is such events that have driven organized labor to insist that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which we believe should be called the Forced Choice Act. Under the EFCA, organizers will have an opportunity to coerce and intimidate non-union workers, such as those at Tyson, who want to remain union free. It’s important to note that the workers chose to remain non-union in a free and secret-ballot election, which is a hallmark of our democratic society.

One can only wonder what the fate of Tyson and its workers will be when the EFCA becomes law and union organizers personally pigeon hole workers into signing card checks stating that they want to be represented by a union.

Unions want the Democrats to pass into law the Employee Free Choice Act because union membership has been declining for years. Union leaders believe that the EFCA will guarantee them more union members, more union dues, and greater political clout.

Workers, however, have long recognized that many unions operate for their own self-interest, letting their leaders live like potentates in splendid homes with every amenity known to civilization. In addition, workers realize that unions have become political entities for which Democratic political victories are more important than the welfare of union members.

The time for labor unions is passing. The existence of such entities will soon be an anachronism. Yet, the EFCA, which will surely become law after President Obama takes office, will undoubtedly increase union membership and have a negative affect on Corporate America’s profitability. While unions fight for their survival, believing that the EFCA will breathe new life into their movement, it is essential that Corporate America learn how to further educate its workers to the obvious disadvantage of being unionized.

Though organized labor is a dying institution, one must treat it with the same kind of respect and caution one would call upon when facing a wounded lion. The union movement is not yet dead, and Corporate America must protect itself from its attacks.

If Barack Obama becomes the next president of the United States, the relationship between management and labor will significantly change to the disadvantage of Corporate America.

As we have been writing for quite some time, a Democratic president will mean the passage of The Employee Free Choice Act, which will eliminate secret ballot elections for workers. It will be replaced by card checks. Using card checks, organized labor will be able to coerce and intimidate workers into signing cards affirming that they want to join a union. When a majority of such cards have been signed, a company’s workforce will have been unionized without management having had an opportunity to present its case to workers.

Another ingredient of The Employee Free Choice Act is mandatory arbitration. Mr. Obama supports a provision that if collective bargaining does not result in a decision within 120 days, then the case goes to binding arbitration, the result of which will remain in force for two years. One can imagine unions taking more than 120 days to negotiate a contract just so that binding arbitration will do what they could not do during collective bargaining.

In addition, Mr. Obama supports the revocation of the NLRB’s Kentucky River decision. Unions also support its revocation, so that more and more people can be classified as workers and fewer can be classified as managers. The result will be a significantly increased number of potential union members.

Mr. Obama also supports legislation outlawing the use of replacement workers for those who go out on strike. If companies cannot hire replacement workers, they will be at the mercy of strikers, who can bring economic ruin to companies that don’t bend to union demands.

If Corporate America is to counter the anti-management policies of a President Obama, it must undertake a vigorous program to educate workers to the benefits of remaining union free. America is at a cross roads, and corporations must make sure that they undertake the proper course of action to maintian high levels of productivity and profitability.

As organized labor looks forward to Democratic majorities in both houses of congress and a Democratic president, it is preparing to pop champagne corks, for it knows that the Employee Free Choice Act (a.k.a. card checks) will be signed into law. Business owners, however, are justifiably upset about being aggressively targeted by unions. They have taken to referring to the Act as the Forced Choice Act, for workers will be intimidated and harassed into joining unions by aggressive union organizers. As the Hartford Courant reported: “the card-check procedure almost always results in a union victory because the union controls the entire process."

When the National Labor Relations Act was signed into law 73-years ago, secret ballot elections were a principal component of the legislation. Both labor and management did not want to be intimidated by advocates for a single point of view. However, as union membership has fallen in recent years, unions have wanted to tilt the playing field so that more workers will join unions.

It doesn’t matter to union leaders that the Employee Free Choice Act is a decidedly undemocratic venture. Even the liberal former Senator George McGovern is in favor of secret ballot elections and against the Act. He rightly believes that doing away with secret ballot elections will destroy a valuable and essential feature of our democracy. He stated that it is wrong for politicians to “deny millions of employees the right to a private vote.” And more than 75 percent of Americans also think that secret ballots are the most democratic method of choosing a union.

It is obvious that the majority of Democratic politicians, however, are prepared to do the bidding of organized labor, especially since labor is spending more than $50-million to elect Democrats to the Senate, the House, and the Presidency.

The United States should look to Great Britain for what should be done. Britain passed the 1980 Employment Act that instituted secret ballot elections, after public voice-votes had led to acts of physical intimidation and harassment.

America is facing a dangerous challenge to one of its most respected traditions, and it is essential that Corporate America organize to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. If not, we shall all have to live with the Forced Choice Act.




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While many people in various walks of life claim they have paid their dues, union members go on paying their dues for the entirety of their working lives. And, quite often, those union dues are used to pursue political agendas, which workers may not support.

As a result, there is a ballot initiative in Colorado known as Amendment 49, that would prohibit state and municipal governments from taking money from government workers' paychecks and using that money for lobbying or electioneering.

The defeat of the Amendment has been vigorously supported by Democratic Governor Bill Ritter who is an ardent supporter of unions. And, of course, the unions are campaigning to defeat the Amendment as well.

Surprisingly, the majority of the state’s newspapers, including the liberal Denver Post, support Amendment 49.

Those who support the Amendment agree that no citizen should have income confiscated to pay for laws and regulations that they may not support. To force U. S. citizens to hand over hard-earned cash for purposes that they do not wish to support smacks of totalitarianism.

As the allure and value of unionization fades for millions of workers, unions are attempting to do whatever they can to increase their membership rolls; to that end, they are tapping their members’ salaries to help elect federal officials who will support The Employee Free Choice Act and its mechanism of card checks. Unions hope that such efforts will augment their power and wealth – regardless of the political and economic interests of their members.

As we have reported for a number of months, the Democrats are eager to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and have a new Democratic president sign it into law. We were, therefore, surprised to learn that a number of Democratic members of the House of Representatives have urged the Mexican government to utilize secret ballot elections in union organizing campaigns. Their reason for endorsing secret ballot elections is that such elections prevent the intimidation of workers.

And we agree with that.

Yet, those same Democratic representatives want to do away with secret ballot elections for U.S. workers, so that unions can organize ever larger numbers of workers. And the use of card checks will, no doubt, be accompanied by a certain amount of intimidation.

Why do congressional representatives prefer check cards in the U.S. and secret ballot elections in Mexico?

The reason is apparent: unions are spending millions of dollars to ensure that Democrats control both houses of congress as well as the White House. In other words, where there are unions, there are money and votes for the Democrats. And since there are no U.S. elections in Mexico, the House representatives have no interest in generating greater union membership south of the border.

So much for the principled consistency.

Last week, we reported that a union representing faculty members in colleges and universities in Pennsylvania had objected to a new state law that bans smoking on campuses throughout the state. It seemed odd, to the say the least, that a union would object to a law that protects students and faculty from the health hazards of tar of nicotine in their lungs.

Now another union has added its voice to an already ridiculous situation. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has issued an echo of the earlier objection. It objects to the law because no collective bargaining preceded the enactment of the smoking ban.

Of course, the universities and colleges are rightly adhering to a state law, because the law in fact supersedes the union contract. Union leaders, however, perversely believe that there should have been collective bargaining before the state passed the smoking ban. In this case, of course, the law enacted by legislators is to the benefit of more than 100,000 students and 12,000 faculty members.

When unions object to a law that benefits its members simply because the law had bypassed collective bargaining indicates that unions would rather maintain their power than protect the health of individuals.

Over the years, we have often reported on the absurdity of many union complaints, but when a union of teachers objects to a ruling that would protect their health, one knows that the union movement has invaded and occupied the surrealistic world of Alice in Wonderland.

The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties has stated that it will file an unfair labor practices complaint because there is a ban on smoking at state colleges and universities.

Smoking!
Cancer!
Who could possibly be in favor of the right to contract a deadly disease?

The union represents 6,000 faculty members at 14 state universities in Pennsylvania. Of those 6,000 faculty members, there are numerous athletic coaches. Could they possibly be in favor of young athletes darkening their lungs with tar and nicotine, diminishing their endurance by curtailing the capacity of young lungs to inhale sufficient quantities of oxygen?

One can only imagine a judge’s reaction to the filing of the union’s complaint.

And the labor movement, having grown increasingly superfluous, has simply confirmed its lack of purpose amongst working-class Americans.

Some union leaders are saying that they like secret ballot elections and that it's only anti-union elements who claim that they don't.

To prove that unions love secret ballot elections, for example, a union leader in Maine claims that unions have regular secret ballot elections to elect union leaders. The Employee Free Choice Act, however, is not about electing union leaders; it is about unionizing workers after they have signed card checks.

Union leaders and their supporters in Congress want to do away with secret ballot elections as part of organizing campaigns, so that unions can be more successful in organizing workers than they have been in the past decade.

Some union leaders are simply using a clever rhetorical tactic designed to dispel concerns about doing away with a democratic tradition, namely secret ballot elections. It’s as if those union leaders are saying "don’t worry; we like elections. Just look at how we choose our own leaders."

Any sensible person, however, knows that there is a vast difference between union leadership elections and organizing elections. And there is a vast difference between democratically held secret ballot elections and card checks which may subject workers to coercive tactics.

Corporate America and those who uphold our democratic traditions will not be fooled by such rhetorical bait and switch tactics.

We had previously written about the RICO suits filed by Wackenhut Corporation and Smithfield Foods against unions that resorted to tactics that hurt those companies' bottom lines and injured the interests of their investors and employees.

It's no wonder that UNITE HERE was ordered to pay $17-million by a court after it was found guilty of "fraud, malice, and oppression." The award came as a result of a UNITE HERE noxious campaign against those in the medical field. Similarly, the Service Employees International Union got its comrades in arms to flood hospital emergency rooms in order to get hospitals to capitulate to union demands.

Such tactics are entirely egregious and dangerously damaging to the fabric of American society. It’s time for Corporate America to learn a lesson from Wackenhut and Smithfield Foods and fight back. If not, organized labor will be on a relentless march to achieving a string of destructive victories. And with a Democratic administration promising to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, Corporate America will be the big bull's-eye in organized labor’s crosshairs. The time to act is now!

For years, union membership has been on the decline, which is why organized labor has lobbied so vigorously for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. If the act becomes law, which it will in a Democratic administration, all each worker needs to do is sign a card expressing one's wish to join a union. And with union organizers passing around those cards and pressuring workers to sign, union membership is expected to skyrocket.

Now comes news that union membership is, in fact, increasing in certain areas and it is happening without the help of card checks.

In Boston, for example, 6,359 people have joined unions in the past year. That's the highest number in 20 years! Many of those who have joined unions are truck and taxi drivers, private security guards, and home-healthcare aids.

Boston is like many other large cities across the nation; therefore, one can expect to see a rise in union membership in such places as New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Detroit, etc.

Since this is occurring without the aid of the Employee Free Choice Act, one can only imagine the extraordinarily large number of new union members there will be when the EFCA passes Congress and is signed into law. It is time for Corporate America to create effective strategic action plans to deal with the coming union onslaught. Time is of the essence.

Union membership in the private sector has been steadily declining. In the 1980s, it was 12.1%, today it is 7.5%. Union organizers are discouraged and want to change the playing field.

At the Democratic Convention in Denver, 25% of the delegates are union members or belong to households of union members. And they want the Democrats to re-write labor law.

To wit: They want a Democratic congress and a Democratic president to sign into law a card check bill (i.e., The Employee Free Choice Act), which would do away with secret ballot elections. Since unions have been losing the majority of secret ballot elections, they want an environment where workers can be intimidated into joining unions, which is what would happen with card checks.

Next on their agenda is the repeal of right-to-work laws that currently exist in 22 states. It doesn’t matter to unions that such states have proven to be more economically beneficial to workers than heavily unionized states. Such statistics have been published by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Those states have higher employment figures, more rapidly growing GDP, and more job creation than their unionized cousins.

If the country winds up with a Democratic president and Democratic majority in both houses of congress, the union movement will not merely re-emerge, but it will dominate the workplaces of Corporate America.

According to an article in The New York Times, United Long Term Care Workers, a Los Angeles-based local of the hyper successful Service Employees International Union, has a president whose spending has raised more than eyebrows. It has raised shouts of outrage and indignation. According to annual reports filed with the Labor Department, the local has paid $177,000 to a video production company run by the wife of the local's president, has paid $ 90,000 annually to a day care center run by the mother-in-law of the local's president, and paid $16,000 to a basketball team coached by the brother-in –law of the local's president.

The local represents 155,000 workers who earn approximately $9 an hour. And their local spent their dues as they pleased. Those workers must feel as if they have been conned.

This is another example of how unions, claiming to represent working class individuals, spend union dues. There should be more government oversight of union activities, not less. Unfortunately, those who want to pass The Employee Free Choice Act want to let the unions control the American workplace. The result will be greater union dominance, less freedom of choice for workers and management, and more dues paid into union treasuries. And we already have a idea of how those dues will be spent!

Stephen Cabot has been invited to give an important speech about how to achieve transformational change in the workplace. The speech will be given to attendees at the annual convention of the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership to be held in San Diego from August 16 t0 19.

Mr. Cabot was invited to give the speech because he is highly regarded as one of the foremost labor relations experts and strategists in North America.

He is the author of three best-selling books: Everybody Wins!, Up From Confrontation, and Stephen Cabot’s Complete Guide to Labor Relations. He has been profiled on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and interviewed numerous times on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, ABC World News, and various other media outlets.

For further information about this valuable and important speech, please visit http://www.asaeannualmeeting.org/home.cfm

Alternatively, Mr. Cabot may be contacted at sjcabot@cabotinstitute.com

In an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal of August 8, former Senator George McGovern, a man who has had a long career supporting organized labor, announced that he is against The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would do away with secret ballot elections to determine if workers can join unions. Organized labor and most Democrats support the EFCA, which would permit workers to sign cards indicating that they want to join unions. Of course, the cards would be presented by union organizers, who would pressure workers to add their signatures. No secret ballot elections would be necessary.

Senator McGovern wrote: “Under the EFCA, workers would lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder[s], from fear or reprisal….We cannot be a party [the Democrats] that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election….To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed….I think much of the of the congressional support is based on a desire to give our friends among union leaders what they want. But part of being a good steward of democracy means telling our friends ‘no’ when they press for a course that in the long run may… disrupt a tried an trusted method of conducting honest elections.”

It is remarkable and heartening to read Senator McGovern’s cogent argument against The Employee Free Choice Act, and one can only that his friends in the Democratic party not only heed his warning, but also have the courage to stand up to unreasonable and undemocratic union demands.