THE Employee Free Choice Act is just now the hot-ticket item on Capitol Hill. The bill would change the way unions can organize. President Obama told top AFL-CIO officials last month that "we will pass [it]." If "they" do, in the measure's current form, it will be a sad day for worker freedom in America.
Now, if 30 percent of the workers at a site concur, an election--normally by secret ballot--is held on whether to affiliate with a union. The "card check" provision of the so-called free-choice act would let organizers approach workers and ask for their signatures on cards approving a union. No more private ballots.
Unions say that the current system allows employers too much latitude to threaten workers who might want to unionize. Business groups retort that card check would allow coercion by co-workers and union honchos.
Neither side is pure. Unions, in steep decline, have in some cases forced pricey benefits and high wages that bled industries to the point of insolvency. Conversely, Dickensian sweatshops and child labor are history in large part because of organized labor. Workers today are struggling with layoffs, benefit cutbacks, and decreases in work hours. They watch executives walk off with obscene paychecks, float away from companies they've ruined on golden parachutes, and scoop up bonuses at worker expense, and they justifiably clamor for fair treatment.
The balance of power between employees and management--a balance unions help provide--is an important facet of American life. Still, card check threatens an even greater principle, the sanctity of the uncoerced vote.
"Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?" Teamsters President James Hoffa recently thundered. Well
Since the early 1800s, when the London Working Men's Association demanded that "the suffrage, to be exempt from the corruption of the wealthy and the violence of the powerful, must be secret."
Since the constitutions of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union, and the United Auto Workers were written--all of which require union elections to be conducted by secret ballot.
Since 2001, when Democrats in Congress and then-UAW President Stephen Yokich pounded Mexican President Vincente Fox on the issue. "Why can't Mexican workers have the right to secret-ballot elections to vote for any union?" Mr. Yokich demanded.
Unions have their place in the American pageant, but the secret ballot, the chalice of a conscience-driven vote, does, too. This EFCA deserves to fail.
POSTSCRIPT
Virginians might want to pay particular attention to freshman Sen. Mark Warner's vote on the EFCA. A former businessman, Mr. Warner should appreciate the stress that the act would put on businesses now. He calls himself a "radical centrist," but will he break ranks with Senate Democrats on this issue?