This is a topic that I have been avoiding for a while now, but like they say, there's no time like the present. Currently under debate in the Senate and House is a bill, innocuously named the Employee Free Choice Act
more commonly known as card check. Oh, sure, that sounds like something everyone can support, right? Employees are nice salt of the earth-type people, and free choice is always a good thing. However, as Orwellian bill-naming conventions seem to go these days, EFCA in fact isn't for the benefit of employees, nor does it give them free choice. Go figure.
Let's back up a bit, before I continue. Current U.S. labor laws state that union organizers can distribute union cards, which employees can sign, certifying that they'd be interested in the union representing them. When the union organizers have convinced at least 30 percent of the work force into signing their cards, the employer will facilitate a secret ballot, and if a majority of the workforce votes yes the National Labor Relations Board will certify the union as being the representative of the employees. Card check would change all this, by requiring the NLRB to recognize that the employees in question have been assimilated by the hive mind - I mean, collectivized by the union - without a secret ballot election where names aren't attached to the answer to do you want to unionize?
In 2001, 14 Democrats who voted yes on the 2007 incarnation of EFCA signed their names on a letter to the Mexican Junta Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, which insisted that the JFCA use the secret ballot in all union recognition elections. In a case of it'd be ironic if he had a sense of irony Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the sponsor of EFCA, also signed the letter to Mexico's JFCA. In other words, secret ballots are great for foreign workers in other countries, but American workers have to attach their names to their unionization votes. Now that's what I call sticking up for the American worker!
Is it just me, or does anyone else see anything wrong with this situation? Imagine that you have a job, or if you do have a job, imagine that you're at work. A union organizer is roaming around, and EFCA has been signed into law. That stranger, that person about whom you know nothing, will know your name and how you voted on unionizing. Worse yet, your employer and your co-workers will know how you voted. Doesn't that seem like there's even the slightest chance that your co-workers would harass you or try to influence your vote, or that your boss would try to influence your vote? And doesn't the idea of strangers showing up at your doorstep, wanting to talk to you about changing your unionization vote strike you as just a bit ... undemocratic? Especially when you consider that during Congressional testimony in 2007, former union organizers testified that they personally heard from workers that they signed the union card simply to get the organizer to leave their home and not harass them further. Is this a behavior that should be encouraged? If unions can't convince a majority of workers to unionize based on the merits of collective bargaining, and have to resort to changing the rules of the game through measures such as EFCA, then maybe they should just accept that the democratic majority disagreed with their argument and try a different tack, instead of ramrodding collectivization measures through, against the majority's wishes.
Jesse Hathaway is a senior studying English. Send him an e-mail at jh309105@ohiou.edu.
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Opinion
Jesse Hathaway
