Print
Return to online version

March 6, 2007

In Allentown, Not So Crazy About Card Checks

Marc Comtois
Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved

So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coal
Chromium Steel

And we're waiting here in Allentown
But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away.

So goes a portion of Billy Joel's '80s hit "Allentown", a working man's song about how life was changing in a union town. With the news that the House of Representatives has passed the "Employee Free Choice Act", which really seeks to strip away the right of workers to vote up or down on unionization via secret ballot and requires a so-called "card check," Joel's song came to mind. For the heck of it, I thought that, instead of me rehashing (and here and here) why this was so wrong, it might be worth finding out what the local newspaper of a union town--like Allentown--had to say. The Morning Call of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley is the Allentown hometown newspaper. After editorializing that "[i]t was a cynical and misleading vote, one that was more about politics than it was about helping workers," the paper explains:
Union leaders say employer intimidation contributes to this decline. They cite statistics that workers who try to organize fellow employees stand a one-in-five chance of losing their jobs. They complain about employers hiring consultants who specialize in pressuring workers into not supporting unions. It happens.

However, the solution this legislation proposes would replace one form of coercion with another. In doing so, it does away with one of democracy's most hallowed tools to preserve freedom of choice — the secret ballot. In its place, it would allow unions to organize workplace simply by getting a majority of employees to sign authorization cards — the so-called card check. In place of a boss leaning on a worker not to vote for the union, it puts face-to-face peer pressure from a labor organizer to unionize. Pressure can work both ways, and without the protection of privacy, workers could subject themselves to harassment, or worse, from just another source. It happens.

This isn't the way to make the workplace fair. The National Labor Relations Act already makes it illegal for employers to bully their workers into not supporting unions. There are legitimate questions about whether the act's enforcement provisions are adequate to protect workers' rights. In fact, the Employee Free Choice Act would give the National Labor Relations Board more power to penalize employers when they fire workers for trying to organize — something that gets to the heart of labor's concern. Paired with a secret ballot, it would allow workers to vote according to who they think made the better case — labor or management.

The union bosses and their Democratic friends have sought to use legitimate concerns about the shortcomings of the NLRB as an opportunity to strengthen their control over the rank and file--both current and prospective. As the Call's editorial staff wrote, this was indeed "cynical and misleading." And entirely unsurprising.

Comments

The following appeared in the Providence Journal, Monday, March 12, 2007.

No secret ballots for Despotcrats

Another victory for tyrannical despots. Another defeat for democracy.

What am I referring to? On March 1, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill cleverly misnamed the “Employee Free Choice Act of 2007.”

The act boils down to this: All that is needed to “unionize” is to present a petition signed by a majority of employees who aren’t represented by a union, and they’re unionized.

No election. No voting. No secret ballots. “Poof!” The employees of So & So unit are now members of Local XXX of Such & Such Union.

Rhode Island’s own “Congressmen for Life” Jim Langevin and Patrick Kennedy voted for this!

What’s next? I’m sure lifetime politicians such as Langevin and Kennedy savor the notion that they could do away with involving themselves in something as trivial as elections and secret ballots. Get a simple majority of voters to openly sign a petition for them to remain in Congress, skip the election, and they’re certified the victor. Why waste time and effort with elections and secret ballots?

The cornerstone of our democracy in the United States, up until now, has been the freedom to vote in an election on a secret ballot. Yet these self-styled “Democrats” voted against our democracy. They should change the name of their party to Despotcrats.

James Madison, the fears you and others wrote about in the Federalist Papers are coming true.

WILLIAM J. GREENAWAY

Cranston

Posted by: Bill Greenaway at March 13, 2007 11:31 AM