House Committee on Education and Labor
U.S. House of Representatives

Today’s the day that House Democrats finally will provide Big Labor bosses the Big Payback they’ve been waiting for.  This afternoon, House Democrats are poised to back the cleverly-titled “Employee Free Choice Act,” legislation to strip workers of their private voting rights in union organizing elections and make their votes public through a “card check.” 

As the vote approaches, it seems that this will be quite a lonely day for card check supporters.  In just the past 24 hours alone, major editorial pages, opinions leaders, and – yes – even a high-profile labor organization have weighed in strongly against the card check bill.  Consider this: 

An editorial in today’s Los Angeles Times notes, “The bedrock of federal labor law is not unionism under any conditions, but the right of workers to choose whether they want to affiliate with a union…  Unions once supported the secret ballot for organization elections.  They were right then and are wrong now.” 

The Wall Street Journal says, “So far this Congress, Democrats have been trying to present themselves as ‘moderates’ who won’t return to their bad special-interest selves pre-1994.  But this union-enabling bill strips away that mask and exposes an anti-business animus out of the 1970s, if not the 1930s.” 

The San Francisco Examiner writes, “Making public the votes or nonvotes of every employee in a company being organized exposes them to the worst kinds of intimidation.  We guarantee secret ballots to voters who elect congressmen and senators.  Why end that same right in the workplace simply to help Big Labor?” 

Commentator Morton Kondracke, on last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume, said, “It’s pretty pathetic that the unions and the Democratic Party can only get people to join unions by abandoning one of the prime principles of democracy, namely the secret ballot.” 

The Fraternal Order of Police told Speaker Pelosi, “Law enforcement officers are uniquely susceptible to such pressure.  The FOP is an organization run by law enforcement officers for law enforcement officers and without the anonymity of the secret ballot, the FOP would probably not exist today.” 

As it turns out, the American people – including union members – strongly agree with all of these assertions.  According to a January 2007 poll, 87 percent of Americans agree that “every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union.”  As a result, 79 percent of those polled explicitly oppose the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act.”  And in July 2004, Zogby International conducted a survey of more than 700 union members, in which 78 percent said that Congress should keep the existing secret ballot election process in place. 

Simply put, House Democrats and their allies in Big Labor are attempting to undermine democracy in the workplace, and the American people just don’t like what they see.  A lonely day indeed for a Big Labor Big Payback.