Secret Ballot Watch

The controversial card check scheme continues to draw bipartisan opposition, and for good reason. Its forced government contracts – compulsory interest arbitration, in government-speak – are drawing particular scrutiny, with serious questions being raised about their impact on workers, businesses, and the economy.

Today’s Roll Call contains an essay from R. Theodore Clark Jr., a senior partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago, who “has been involved in more than 60 public-sector interest arbitration cases over the past 40 years.” Clark lifts the veil on some of the lesser-known aspects of these forced government contracts and debunks the arguments of card check supporters:  

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“As the Supreme Court noted in a recent decision, ‘[t]he object of [the NLRA] was not to allow governmental regulation of the terms and conditions of employment, but rather to ensure that employers and their employees could work together to establish mutually satisfactory conditions.’

“EFCA’s compulsory arbitration provision is also a sharp departure from the long-held position of the AFL-CIO. For example, former AFL-CIO President George Meany stated that ‘compulsory arbitration ... just will not work because it is an abrogation of freedom. The crucial difference between voluntary and compulsory arbitration is the difference between freedom and its denial.’ …

“Even in the best of economic times, compulsory arbitration of first contracts poses serious risks to the economy. But for an economy in that is in dire straits and in desperate need of encouragement, it would be, in a word, disastrous.”

Clark, “EFCA’s First Contract Compulsory Arbitration Provisions Could Be Disastrous,” Roll Call, 06.22.09 

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With record unemployment rates in some regions of the country and job losses continuing to mount, it’s no wonder policymakers and opinion leaders are looking with suspicion at a bill that could put 600,000 Americans out of work in the first year after enactment alone.

Disastrous indeed.

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