Change Lacking Choice: Obama and the Employee Free Choice Act
All this week I’ve been in Scottsdale, Arizona at SPN’s 16th Annual Meeting. I met a lot of great people, experienced some quality speakers and panels, and, as is typical of these events, had too much fun and not enough sleep.
Thursday’s keynote speaker was U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, one of the few and rare success stories of the Bush administration. She spoke of the need to stay economically competitive, the pitfalls of “strong” labor (i.e. Europe), and – my favorite piece of legislation… – the Employee Free Choice Act. Hearing her speak on EFCA reminded me of a short piece I wrote on the subject earlier this year that never came to light, neither on this blog or any other (more reputable) place. Thus…
Union membership has been decreasing for years. In 2006, it dropped to just 12% with numbers in 2007 at similarly low rates.
To combat this trend, union officials have recently made the Employee Free Choice Act (S.1041) their top political-lobbying priority. A misnomer of monumental proportions, the bill replaces a worker’s right to cast a private, and thereby, anonymous ballot when voting for or against workplace unionization with, instead, a questionable and often coercive organizing method known as “card check”.
“Card check” produces anything but a “free choice”. Neither private nor government-supervised, it functions more like an ongoing petition drive than a democratic election. While union organizers are still required to collect a majority of signatures, this bare and open practice invites pressure, intimidation, and corruption on the part of union supporters. There are even documented cases where the lives of resisting employees have been physically threatened.
Can such a public process give an accurate reflection of employees’ desires, especially compared to that of private ballot elections?
The answer, I think, is blatantly obvious. But, since unions claim to speak for “the people”, I’ll reference a public poll for confirmation. According to a 2006 national survey by the Opinion Research Corporation, 75% of Americans felt that secret ballot elections were the most democratic method of choosing unionization. By contrast, only 12% believed that “card check” provided the fairest method, with another 13% answering that they “don’t know”.
By vote and by common sense, the answer is clear: only private elections safeguard individual intent, and thereby, free choice.
And yet, Senator Barack Obama not only voted for EFCA, he co-sponsored it, quite triumphantly I might add. Speaking in the tone of historical inevitability, Obama stated: “We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when”. (Chicago Tribune, 3/4/07).
Given his outspoken reputation for supporting civil liberties, it is curious – if not daringly hypocritical – that Mr. Obama would actively oppose free and democratic elections for workers within the context of unionization.
In reality though, neither Obama – nor the unions for that matter – are concerned with principles, with the way the act would affect employee privacy one way or another. Unions look to the additional 1.5 million members a year (for the next ten to fifteen years!) the legislation would bring and, of course, the hundreds of millions of additional dollars in forced union dues. And Senator Obama, in turn, understands that much of this money will be sent right back into the election campaigns of he, and his ideological allies, in order to perpetuate and expand the current system of big government, big labor and, yes, less choice.
