Change Workers Do Not Need

Former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao weighs in on the two major provisions of the “Employee Free Choice Act” at the Wall Street Journal:

One of these counterproductive, special-interest initiatives is “card check,” which would deprive workers of the ability to vote privately in workplace unionization elections — a vital worker protection that dates back to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

There is a push in Congress to enact card check despite the fact that the vast majority of workers — including rank-and-file union members — want to keep the private ballot system in workplace unionization elections and do not want it replaced by a signature card process that will subject them to the pressures of solicitation and potential intimidation by union activists. Ironically, to decertify a union, labor leaders insist on holding private-ballot elections to protect workers from employer intimidation.

Another destructive and undemocratic aspect of the card-check bill is a provision for government-dictated labor contracts in newly unionized workplaces. Under the bill, if an initial labor contract is not agreed to within a congressionally dictated timetable, the government could designate an “arbitration board” to write a labor contract that employers and workers would be forced to live under for two years. This is not just a problem for employers. Workers would not have any right to ratify or reject the contract.