When the Congressional Democrats voted for their leadership, they did it in private. Some leadership posts were highly contested and Congressmen counted themselves lucky to be able to hide their votes.
Rep Lousie Slaughter, a New York Democrat, told the Congressional Quarterly, "It’s a secret ballot, thank the Lord."
Sometime this week, if not today, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will be introduced in the Senate. This bill will eliminate a persons right to a secret ballot as far as unions are concerned.
The bill sounds innocent enough, but that is by design. Leftists long ago learned the art of camouflage and title the most destructive bill to sound as vague or innocent as possible. This bill’s title has been called "Orwellian."
But understand one thing: the Employee Free Choice Act does nothing for the employee and everything for the unions.
For a shop to become union, thirty percent of the employees have to collected signed authorization cards. Those cards are then used to petition the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election, generally done within 60 days. During that time, the employers are generally allowed to give another perspective on the idea of unionizing a shop. The employees are then allowed to vote for or against unionizing in private. The key there is "in private."
If the EFCA becomes a law, private ballots are a thing of the past. All that would be necessary is for 51% of a shop to sign a card and it’s union. Here’s how the Heritage Foundation sees it:
The EFCA would make it easier for union officials to pressure workers. Under the card-check process, union organizers would publicly solicit signatures on union authorization cards. After a majority of workers at a company sign the cards, the union becomes the bargaining representative of all the workers at the company.
Without secret ballots, union organizers know exactly who has signed union cards and who has not. In the past, union organizers have repeatedly approached and pressured—and, in some cases, threatened—reluctant workers.[1] They have also used pro-union co-workers to solicit signatures, putting peer pressure on "holdouts" to change their minds.
The card-check process also denies workers the right to vote "yes" or "no" on joining a union. Workers can only vote "yes" by signing the card. Not signing a card simply means "not yet." Organizers are free to return again and again until they get the result they want. That is not voting, which by definition is a choice between two or more options.
Even the limited freedom of saying "not yet" would be denied to some workers. Under card check, all workers in a company must join the union after organizers collect cards signed by a majority, even if some of those workers did not know about the organizing drive and were never asked to sign a card. A worker has a right to express his or her views with a ballot, even if that vote does not change the results of the election. Card check takes that right away.
But don’t take their word for it. After all, they are a conservative think take, probably in bed with big business, right? How about the word of Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern:
Now Obama supporter Warren Buffet has even come out against the idea. Speaking on CNBC today, he said:
It would be the height of irony if the first black president eliminated the right to a private ballot to 105 million people in what is supposed to be the freest country in the world. Not only would it open any worker in America up to pressure from union thugs, but it is estimated that it would cost the country 600,000 jobs in 2010.
Yet Joe Biden says he is for it and Obama says he’ll sign it. If he does, it is to payback the unions for their money and manpower in 2008.
