March 11, 2009
Economics Department
EFCA and Secret Ballots
I disagree with a lot of what Lindsay Beyerstein writes, but she's still one of the most thoughtful people on my blogroll. However, she gets a bit goofy when it comes to labor unions. Consider yesterday's post about the Employee Free Choice Act:
Management groups object to majority signup (aka "card check") for the simple reason that it would make it easier for workers to have a union if they want one. The anti-EFCA groups make it sound like card check would be a departure from the status quo under which the right of the worker to a secret vote is respected.
Far from being an exotic reform proposal, unionization by card check is already an option.
In fact, every unionization effort starts with organizers collecting the signatures of workers who are interested in forming a union.
If organizers can get at least a third of the workers in a shop to sign up, then the union can ask management for permission to represent those workers at the bargaining table. One third is just the legal minimum. In practice, organizers don't try to organize shops without strong majority support. It's just not worth their time.
At this point, the employer has the option of recognizing the union based on the card check. Alternatively, the employer can demand a National Labor Relations Board election.
Let's be real. Employers don't ask for NLRB elections to preserve right of their workers to democratic self-determination.
Well, no. That's not why employers ask for NLRB elections. But so what? NLRB elections still preserve right of their workers to democratic self-determination.
Forced elections buy management time to bring in high-priced union-busting consultants who teach the bosses how to propagandize workers and fire organizers. Such tactics are illegal, but under the status quo, the penalties are trivial and enforcement is negligible.
So fix that. If you want to support workers and you believe unions are a solution, then improve enforcement and increase the penalties. In fact, the EFCA already includes provisions to do both of those things.
Under the status quo, the employer gets to decide whether there will be an NLRB election.
Lindsay's right. That's pretty silly. Unionizing should always require an election. It's bad enough they're forcing employees to join the union when they don't want to. They should at least use a proper democratic process.
Under Employee Free Choice, the employees choose how their votes will be counted.
That's not really true. They only get to have a secret-ballot NLRB election if the majority of employees insists on it. Got that? Employees will have a non-secret vote to decide if they want a secret vote. If a majority of employees want a non-secret vote, the rest of the employess are forced to reveal their vote---allowing outside parties to influence their vote---even if they don't want to.
The right to a secret ballot is useful only if it belongs to each individual voter. Neither the union nor the company should be able to take it away.
Update: I'm trying to debate Lindsay about this in the comments to her post. I say card check is a fundamentally bad idea, she says it's good because it offsets the advantages of the employers. We're clearly talking past each other.
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Card check is nothing short of an open door for labor to employ coercion in organizing. How anyone can think abolishing the secret ballot is a bad idea is beyond me and obviously has never worked in a union environment.
I think you're missing a "not" somewhere in that second sentence...
You're right:
"Card check is nothing short of an open door for labor to employ coercion in organizing. How anyone can think abolishing the secret ballot is a GOOD idea is beyond me and obviously has never worked in a union environment."