| I like to keep tabs on what our friend "Dr. Evil" (Rick Berman) is up to, and the latest news seems noteworthy enough to report. Six businesses have formed a coalition to oppose EFCA - the Employee Free Choice Act. They are:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Coalition for a Democratic Workplace
Americans for Prosperity
Workforce Fairness Institute (which got millions from the Food Marketing Institute)
Center for Union Facts (Berman's group)
Save Our Secret Ballot
From the names of these groups, you'd think they represent truth, justice, freedom, and democracy. But it's all a lie. Here's why.
If the Employee Free Choice Act passes, employees will be able to form a union in one of two ways. Either, they can have 50% plus one of their members sign cards saying they want a union ("card check") OR they can have an election with a secret ballot. It's their free choice. If they want a secret ballot, they can have it. No problem. But if they don't want the secret ballot - if that is acceptable to them - they can use card check to form a union.
Is any freedom or liberty being lost? No. Any democracy going away? No. Want a secret ballot? Great, you've got it. Don't want a secret ballot? Fine, use card check. It's that easy.
These front groups are claiming that EFCA will require unions to form using card check and thus will prevent employees from using a secret ballot. Thus all of the rhetoric about "democracy" and "fairness." But that is a lie. A flimsy lie. Yet they are perpetuating that lie as their only argument against EFCA - mainly because there are no good arguments against EFCA.
These front groups and the companies they represent want to save their oh-so-important secret ballots because when elections are held to form unions, the employers currently can intimidate employees from forming a union. There's an entire union-busting industry, in fact. They want to preserve their right to intimidate workers, they don't want to preserve democracy in the workplace. Because the truth is that democracy isn't going away. |
