Let it never be said that Democrats don’t return favors. Since 1994, labor unions have donated more than half a billion dollars to Democratic candidates, including more than $1 million in the 2006 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Now that the Democrats have control of Congress, they’ve decided to repay Big Labor with a kickback of their own: the staggeringly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act of 2007, which will be brought to a vote in the House Thursday.
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This legislation, sponsored by Democratic congressman George Miller of California, would revoke the right of workers to a secret-ballot election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board when voting on whether to form a union. Publicly signed union cards would be allowed to count as votes instead (a practice known as “card check”).
The proposal is plainly undemocratic. By not protecting workers from the public declaration of their unionization votes, it would expose them to intimidation and peer pressure. Karen Mayhew and Mike Ivey, two workers represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, recently testified before Congress about their experiences with union harassment. Mayhew reported verbal attacks and constant on-the-job pestering, and Ivey told of being badgered at home by union organizers who had obtained his personal information. These are merely the latest entries in labor’s long history of pressure tactics.
Union leaders favor the legislation because it would give them an advantage in organization drives. Right now they’re grasping at any advantage they can find. Union membership has been in decline for decades, and dipped to just under 7.4 percent of the workforce last year. Nationally, labor unions lose some 500,000 members a year, according to UC Davis labor-history professor David Brody. Unions see card check as a way to shore up their numbers, while Democrats see it as a way to bolster a constituency that delivers both votes and money.
Supporters of the legislation contend that it’s needed to protect workers from employer coercion, but, as James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation recently pointed out, their claims are almost entirely baseless. According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), verifiable employer coercion took place in less than 1 percent of last year’s organizing elections. The vast majority of union complaints are either withdrawn or overruled.
Most union members favor the current, secret-ballot system. According to a Zogby poll, 71 percent think this system is fair, and 78 percent wouldn’t want to see it replaced with something less private. But Democrats are pressing ahead with the card-check legislation anyway, and it’s likely that their bill will pass in the House.
Fortunately, Vice President Cheney has announced that the president will veto the legislation if it hits his desk. It is this veto — not card check — that will protect workers’ rights.
