Secret Ballot Watch

As speculation continues to mount about efforts to advance an alternative version of the controversial Employee Free Choice Act, the legislation’s call for forced government contracts has come under increasing fire.

In today’s Washington Examiner, a former Labor Department official explains how the arbitration proposal contained in the card check plan differs from better-known forms of voluntary arbitration:  

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“Card Check’s third section, innocuously called ‘Facilitating Initial Collective Bargaining Agreements,’ would go much further than simply ‘facilitating.’ It would allow the government to impose a contract on many businesses and workers who would otherwise negotiate terms for themselves. ...

“Card Check calls the process ‘arbitration,’ but the procedure described in the bill is known as compulsory binding interest arbitration, which is quite different from the arbitration most people know.

“Most arbitration in the private sector is known as grievance arbitration. Here, an arbitrator is voluntarily chosen to interpret an existing contract, which was originally freely agreed to by both parties. Everyone is there because they choose to be.

“Card Check, on the other hand, would allow one party to force the other into compulsory binding-interest arbitration. Both parties would be required to abide by terms of a contract to which neither had previously agreed. Essentially, it would impose a contract on a party against its will. …

“Unlike today where the workers can vote on an agreement, Card Check would give a union representative the power to present the union's position to the arbitrator. The arbitrator would then create the contract, essentially erasing the worker from the final decision.”

Vernuccio, “Government-forced contracts are Card Check's real threat,” The Washington Examiner, 06.30.09 

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This isn’t the first time card check’s reality hasn’t matched its proponents’ spin.

Workers worried about how the card check public sign-up process would take away their privacy should be equally concerned about how the so-called arbitration aspect of the bill would take away their right to have a say about their contracts.

It’s not about give-and-take, it’s about take-and-take more.

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