EFCA's little secret

April 8, 2009 2:01 am

AMERICAN WORKERS have a statutory right, without fear of reprisal, to join labor unions to bargain collectively with their employers. Those employers are legally compelled to negotiate in earnest with properly established unions. The proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act would fortify worker rights in these regards, and the rule of law. Objections to EFCA rightly center on a provision called "card check," which would gut yet another worker right--that of deciding whether to unionize by secret ballot.

In these pages recently, union officer Dennis Martire proclaimed in triplicate: "It [EFCA] doesn't take away the secret ballot. It doesn't take away the secret ballot. One last time, it doesn't take away the secret ballot." This is technically true, but one might answer Mr. Martire this way: It might as well. It might as well. It might as well.

At present, a majority of workers at a site can elect union representation in one of two ways--by secret vote or by signing cards. If workers choose to unionize via the first method, that's all she wrote. If they do so via "card check," an employer may require reiteration of majority will via the unobserved ballot box. A secret election is of course a safeguard against intimidation by organizers who can corral workers one at a time and pressure them to sign a card.

EFCA would effectively make the cards the last word in the process. Yes, an employer could call an election if 30 percent of workers signed union cards, but organizers would not be obliged to reveal that figure. They would certainly push on till they achieved, by hook or by crook, the 50 percent mark and presented the company with a fait accompli. Secret elections would become rare if not extinct.

Workers deserve protection from both organizers' and employers' strong-arming. Virginia Sens. Webb and Warner could usefully forge a compromise tolerable to every fair-minded American. Nothing's fair about card check.