Forced Unionization On Tap Tomorrow in Trenton

Tomorrow the Senate Labor Committee will consider a resolution urging Congress to pass legislation the Senate and big labor have already determined will not happen. SJR 68 sends a message from the New Jersey legislature to Congress insisting that they pass the anti-democratic Employee Free Choice Act.

Organized labor has morphed itself from an entity that attempts to advocate for the interests of workers into a political machine. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that since 1994, labor has contributed nearly half a billion dollars to Democratic campaigns.Now holding the majority,big labor's big kickback comes in the form of the comically-titled “Employee Free Choice Act” (EFCA).

Here are some facts. Under current law, a union seeking to represent a group of workers must garner signed authorization cards from 30 percent of that group's workforce. Once that is attained, the union petitions the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to administer an election via secret ballot.These elections are ordinarily held within six to eight weeks and union organizers can demand the names and home addresses of all the organization's employees and pay them a visit. As you can imagine, the possibility for some intimidation exists. If, after this organizing drive, a majority of employees vote “yes” in their secret election, an organization becomes unionized. The National Labor Relations Act has never been significantly amended and allowed union membership to flourish in the post World War II era.

However, for decades, unions have seen their national numbers decline. With every era of decline came a new culprit. First it was President Reagan; then it was President Bush; then under President Clinton it was the bad economy; then it was the good economy. Anything to avoid confessing that they were selling a product no one seemed interested in buying. The decline could have something to do with an astute point the Wall Street Journal noted when editorializing against the EFCA—the most heavily unionized private-sector industries such as airlines and Detroit automakers—have been shedding jobs. Unions have earned the reputation of providing short-term wage gains in exchange for long-term job insecurity— and that is a swap workers are not willing to make.

Enter the EFCA, which would do away with the messy secret-ballot process and instead lower the bar so that workers would be represented by a union if more than 50 percent of employees sign authorization cards. Employees would still be subject to home visits, only they would now be making their final decisions in the presence of union organizers and coworkers. Of course, if workers want to leave their union, they will find the EFCA is a one-way street.

It undermines democracy. American elections—from your 4th grade student council representative in which children put their heads on the desk to the election of the President—are done via secret ballot. EFCA spinsters will tell you that the current system is ripe for employer coercion. Ask yourself what better protects the sanctity of an election—a secret ballot or a public declaration in the physical presence of partisans.

Even worse, the EFCA is laden with clauses that would throw initial contract negotiations into arbitration.That would deny workers at a newly unionized company the right to vote on their first contract.

Given all this, it is no surprise that a Zogby poll found that 71 percent of union members do not want to see the secret ballot discarded. As noted, organized labor stopped being about labor and started being about politics and institutional protection long ago.

Saying this is the wrong message to send to Washington just doesn't seem sufficient.