Secret Ballot Watch

Special interest groups have been making a fuss today about a petition being delivered to Congress in favor of the ironically-named Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would actually take away an employee’s free choice about whether to join a union by stripping away the right to a secret ballot.

But what has been lost amid discussion of a million or so signatures corralled by the special interest groups backing this plan is the fate of the estimated 105 million Americans who stand to lose their rights under this legislation.

An analysis from the Heritage Foundation last year found that the card check scheme “would disenfranchise 105 million American workers, which encompasses more than two-thirds, or 68.8 percent, of the American workforce.” That’s 105 million workers who are currently not members of unions, but who are covered by the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act, which the card check plan would modify to abandon the current system of federally-supervised secret ballot elections.

An opinion piece in today’s Washington Examiner looks at the numbers another way:

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“Consider the larger picture. One million would represent only about one-sixteenth of the unions’ current total membership. Should Congress overhaul an entire labor legal system and remove workplace rights, when only one out of every 16 union members can be bothered to send in propaganda that labor officials have made their highest priority?”

Jacobson, “About today's million-union member march for Employee 'Free' Choice Act,” Washington Examiner, 02.04.09

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With 105 million Americans in the crosshairs, we’re left to wonder: will Democrats actually pull the trigger on the undemocratic card check scheme?

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