With all the talk recently about a
compromise on the anti-worker card check plan, pundits and political observers have been turning their attention to a less well-known provision of the plan, but one that many believe could be equally damaging: the forced government contracts. Over the weekend, Michael Barone speculated on what a card check compromise might look like for workers, small business owners, and American industry:
“The labor unions’ drive for the full Card Check bill seems to have foundered. Specter enters a Democratic caucus where a half dozen or more senators have made it clear, publicly or privately, that they will not vote for Card Check. His statement gives cover to a Democratic leadership that wants to propitiate its labor union funders but does not want to put so many of its members on the spot. A vote to effectively abolish the secret ballot is not easy to defend come election time.
“But the unions may have a fallback position: Forget about the secret ballot and try to pass a bill with mandatory federal arbitration. This might be easier to defend. Every American knows what the secret ballot is; few Americans know what mandatory arbitration means.
“Mandatory arbitration would be a major, massive change in American labor law. Currently, unions are free to strike, but employers are free to resist their demands as long as they want. The Card Check bill would require, after only 120 days of bargaining, a federal arbitrator to step in and impose a settlement. A centralized bureaucrat, not responsible to shareholders (or to union leaders), would determine wages, fringe benefits, and working conditions. There would evidently be no appeal.
“No one knows exactly what this would mean in practice. But the negative consequences are easy to imagine. Arbitrators might very well impose terms and conditions similar to those in existing union-negotiated contracts. Those might include not only wages that would reduce a business’s profits, but also generous fringe benefits and thousands of pages of detailed work rules. Private employers might be forced into funding union pension plans with their massive long-term liabilities. Detailed work rules would mean adversarial negotiations between company foremen and union shop stewards over even the most minor changes in work procedures.”
Barone, “Beware of mandatory arbitration in Card Check,” The Washington Examiner, 05.02.09
The threat to workers’ right to a secret ballot must not be taken lightly, but as talk of a so-called compromise continues, it has become clear that there’s much more at stake than privacy in the formation of a union. Indeed, the rules that govern a worker’s wages, hours, and duties could be stripped from management and workers or their union reps and put in the hands of federal bureaucrats – and there’s nothing anyone could do about it. That’s why the fight against this bill – any version of it – must continue.
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