Disgruntled conservatives who argued last fall that it would
make no difference whether Republicans or Democrats were in charge
of Congress should pay close attention this week.
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is prepared
to vote on legislation that would make it easier for organized
labor to coerce workers into unionizing by denying employees the
right to a secret ballot election. The legislation, which went nowhere under Republican
control, now has 233 co-sponsors and is expected to sail through
the House.
The sorry state of organized labor was reinforced last month
when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing that union membership had dropped
to 12 percent of the U.S workforce. This was the lowest level
recorded in the more than two decades that the BLS has been
tracking union membership regularly and represents a steady decline
from the heyday of organized labor in the 1950s, when more than a
third of workers were members of a union. American workers have
overwhelmingly rejected unions, so the only way for the labor
movement to fight back is to change the rules.
Under current law, if a union gets the signatures of at least 30
percent of employees, it can obtain a secret ballot election
conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. But the
deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act currently in the House
would allow the NLRB to certify a union if a simple majority of
workers publicly sign “card checks.” Employees would not be able to
cast their votes privately, leaving the process vulnerable to union
intimidation tactics. And these tactics need not be as overt as
those of Jimmy Hoffa.
Unions can resort to other forms of harassment to influence
workers who may not be interested in joining, which is clear from
examples in which businesses have allowed unions to organize using
the “card check” process. Mike Ivey, who works for the Freightliner
Custom Chassis Corporation in Gaffney, South Carolina, has sought
legal representation from the National Right to Work Foundation
after four years of harassment from United Auto Workers, which has
tried to organize the facility. Though 70 percent of employees
indicated they had no interest in joining the union, Ivey stated that
the UAW turned his workplace into a hostile work environment in its
drive to get a majority of employees to fall into line. Friendships
fell apart and opponents of unionization were constantly badgered
at work, called at home, and even visited multiple times at their
homes by union organizers.
As someone who once had the misfortune of being a member of a
union as part of my contract with a former employer, I can
personally testify to the power of good old-fashioned peer
pressure. When my union was in contract negotiations, it asked its
members to participate in a silly ritual in which everybody wore
red union shirts at the office to show their solidarity. Given my
political tendencies, I refused to participate in such a
nonsensical exercise. As a result, co-workers would repeatedly stop
by my desk in an effort to cajole me into putting on the shirt,
while others would simply roll their eyes or look at me in disgust
as they passed me. While I never submitted to their demands,
virtually everyone else in the office did, including many who
privately expressed to me their opposition to the union and
recognized the absurdity of such a childish display. I could only
imagine how much more intense the peer pressure would have been had
the issue been about establishing a union.
If unions believe that workers would benefit from their
representation, they have no reason to fear submitting themselves
to the democratic process in a secret ballot election, but instead
they prefer coercion.
In 1992, United Food and Commercial Workers union organizer Joe
Crump let the cat out of the bag when he wrote
that to achieve unionization under the card check process, “you
don’t need a majority or even 30% support among employees.”
Meanwhile, under the secret ballot process, an AFL-CIO organizing
study published in 1989 said, “It is not until the union obtains
signatures from 75% or more from the unit that the union has more
than a 50% likelihood of winning the election.”
The irony is that many House Democrats who support the new
legislation have argued in favor of secret ballot elections in the
past. In 2001, Rep. George Miller, the chief sponsor of the “card
check” bill, wrote a letter to Mexican labor authorities with 15
other members of Congress urging secret ballot union elections.
“(W)e feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order
to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union
they might not otherwise choose,” the letter read. Ten of Miller’s
co-signers are co-sponsors of the current legislation that would do
away with secret ballots, including such notables as Barney Frank
and Dennis Kucinich.
The fact that the “card check” legislation would be such a high
priority for Democrats should come as no surprise. In the 2006
elections, organized labor gave 87 percent of its political
contributions to Democrats, representing $56.8 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. If
unions can reverse their decline as a result of this legislation,
it would help cement Democratic control of Congress. Grover
Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, has said that if it becomes law, the legislation
would enable Democrats to “retain power in Congress for the next 50
years.”
Though the bill is ensured smooth passage through the House, it
faces the possibility of a Republican filibuster in the Senate. But
even if it makes it to the White House, Dick Cheney has already
said that President Bush would exercise a rare veto.
Conservative pundits, including this one, took aim at the
Republican majority as it deviated from its limited government
principles and further blurred the difference between the two
parties. But this week, as the Democratic-controlled House moves to
limit individual liberty at the behest of its friends in big labor,
it is only fair to note that as bad as deviant Republicans may be,
Democrats are worse.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American
Spectator.
