Free Choice?

The "Employee Free Choice Act." An innocent-enough sounding piece of legislation. But take a closer look and this legislation stands to fundamentally alter labor-management relations in the United States, and in the process destroy employee free choice.

What does the law do? Essentially, it does away with decades of established and honed labor-management law that guarantees employees the right to an uncoerced and secret ballot when choosing whether to be represented by a labor union. The current system allows the union and management to each present their respective cases about unionization, and the employees to make a free and informed choice about representation via secret ballot.

The law would replace this system with a "card check." Under the proposed "card check" system, employers would be required to recognize a labor union as its employees' collective bargaining representative when the labor union collects representation cards signed by just over 50% of employees. No longer would employees be entitled to an informed choice, or a choice made by secret ballot and overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Instead their choice would be overseen by union bosses and union organizers. Can anyone say "coercion?"

What's driving this madness? Today, unions represent just 7.5% of the private sector work force. Unions predict that by injecting this lawful ability to subtly (or not so subtly) coerce employees to choose unionization, they can double the unionization rate in the US. That's why unions have made passage of the law priority number 1. With Democrats in Congress and the President-elect indebted to Big Labor, you can bet this bill stands a solid shot of becoming law in 2009.

Ironically, though, the very Democrats pushing hardest for the law, to include Education and Labor Chairman George Miller, recognize the importance of secret union ballots -- in Mexico! Miller wrote in August 2001 to a Mexican council: "We feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." Can anyone say "hypocrite?"

What's right for the Mexican labor force is right for the American labor force. Conservatives in the 2009 Congress must fight this blatant attempt to usurp free choice in American workplaces.