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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