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

The right to a private ballot is the cornerstone of our democracy.  For centuries, Americans – regardless of race, creed, or gender – have fought for the right to vote…and the right to keep that vote to themselves.  Now, just months after a new House Majority was elected in 435 separate, secret ballot elections, it is preparing to strip men and women of their right to a private ballot in the workplace.  What could be more undemocratic than that? 

The “Employee Free Choice Act” – Providing Employees Anything BUT Free Choice

• Contrary to the implication of its title, the bill would strip workers of their right to privacy in union organization elections.  Under current law, unions may organize through either a federally-supervised private ballot election or a “card check” system.
• Instead, the bill would kill private voting rights altogether and make workers’ votes public through a mandatory card check, in which union bosses gather authorization cards purportedly signed by workers expressing their desire for a union to represent them. 
• Such mandatory card checks can strip workers of the right to choose – freely and anonymously – whether to unionize, and card checks notoriously leave workers open to coercion, pressure, and outright intimidation and threats. 
• Moreover, card checks make workers’ personal votes known to their co-workers, their union organizers, and their employers.  How does that protect employee free choice? 

Why Make Working Men and Women’s Private Votes Public?

• Supporters of the bill claim it is necessary to preserve “workers’ rights.”  In reality, however, this bill has nothing to do with workers at all.  Rather, it has everything to do with Big Labor’s last, desperate attempt to retain power.
• Union membership is in sharp decline – down to 12 percent nationwide and just 7 percent in the private sector.  Labor bosses have long sought to kill the private ballot election as a last resort to slow this trend – and this bill gives them that chance. 

Hypocrisy Runs Rampant Among Those Aiming to Kill Private Voting Rights

• A 2001 letter sent by the Education and Labor Committee Chairman and lead sponsor of “Employee Free Choice Act,” Rep. George Miller, and other Democrat Members of Congress to Mexican – yes, Mexican – officials, stated, “We understand that the secret ballot is allowed for, but not required by Mexican labor law.  However, we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they may otherwise not choose.”
• Big Labor has expressed support for secret ballot elections when workers are presented the opportunity to decertify a union at workplace.  Union have argued passionately to the National Labor Relations Board that private ballots “provide the surest means for avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressures and not individual decisions.”