Secret ballots and union organizing

May. 08, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Labor winning in the voting booth, so why change rules?
Big labor is pushing hard to get rid of secret-ballot elections and allow bargaining units to organize through the intimidation racket known as "card check." Unions have argued the grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow thugs to shake down workers for signatures that count as votes, is needed to bring fairness to a process that currently yields predictable, unfair results.

It turns out the unions were right. Secret-ballot elections have favored one side of late: unions, not management.

A report from the National Labor Relations Board shows labor won about two-thirds of the secret-ballot elections held in 2008 -- an improvement from 2007 and labor's best winning percentage since the 1950s. The results have led businesses to raise legitimate questions about the need for such drastic organizing reforms amid a climate that currently favors workers' interests.

"This new data clearly demonstrates that the current system, if anything, is working to the unions' advantage," said Daniel Yager of the HR Policy Association, a group that represents about half of the Fortune 500.

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, businesses would lose the right to demand a secret-ballot election when some of its workers want to form a union. Labor representatives could simply knock on workers' doors at night and badger them to sign authorization cards.

Upon obtaining signatures from the majority of the workers, the union could present them to management without ever announcing the campaign and declare the business a union shop.

And if the company doesn't agree to a contract of the union's liking within 90 days, an arbitrator will impose a binding, two-year deal -- no appeals allowed.

The legislation is an entrepreneurial nightmare that will discourage job-creating investment.

Naturally, unions decried the NLRB's numbers as misleading, alleging management prevents most elections from happening in the first place by threatening workers.

"By the time you get to an election, corporations have so poisoned the well that the petition for a union is withdrawn in many cases," AFL-CIO spokeswoman Alison Omens said.

Oh, please. Employers currently retain the same rights as unions in providing workers with information on the consequences of unionization. It's not like managers can corner workers and have them sign a card that amounts to a binding "no" vote -- precisely the kind of power unions want for themselves.

Only a secret-ballot election allows a worker to declare his or her position in anonymity and enjoy protection from retaliation by either side. And unions are growing under this democratic process -- recall that two years ago Wynn Las Vegas dealers overwhelmingly voted to unionize via secret ballot despite impassioned, personal pleas from company founder and Chairman Steve Wynn.

Fortunately, the Employee Free Choice Act, as previously introduced in the House of Representatives, appears dead. Although President Obama has championed the bill as payback for union support in last year's election, moderate Senate Democrats know it's a political death sentence in their conservative states.

Rather than attempt to rewrite this monstrosity, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada should scrap it altogether.