Secret Ballot Watch

There’s a lesson to be learned about the Employee Free Choice Act – and it’s not just about what this special interest ploy can do to a weakened economy. The act can stifle education reform as well.

Take it from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He vetoed a similar proposal in his state a few years ago, but his successor signed it into law.

At the time, most saw the new law in economic terms – a victory for Big Labor over businesses. Later, as Romney explained in an online essay for The Denver Post last week, Bay State parents and others discovered how the law affected their children’s education.   

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“In 2006, my last year as governor of Massachusetts, I vetoed a card check bill that would have applied to public employees. But the following year, after I had left office, big unions again campaigned for the legislation, and this time my Democratic successor signed the bill into law. No one expected what happened next.

“With new authority to compel workers to join unions, labor leaders and organizers unionized a charter school for the first time in Massachusetts, unbeknownst to school administrators and parents. One of the crucial benefits of charter schools is that they operate outside public employee union contracts.

“Charter schools can be flexible and innovative, reward results, and provide alternatives to traditional public schools. They do not face the often burdensome union contract rules that stifle creativity and reward ineffective and unproductive teachers protected behind the muscle of union power. …

“Working Americans and business owners are both Republicans and Democrats. Our nation's labor laws should encourage businesses, schools, and other institutions to succeed through collaboration and flexibility, not by placing new power and authority in the hands of Big Labor and the federal government at the expense of employers and employees.”

Romney, “The EFCA threatens educational innovation,” Denverpost.com, 08.07.09 

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We know all too well what EFCA means for our workplaces: workers’ privacy would be eliminated, and their voices would be shut out of a contract resolution process that puts federal bureaucrats in charge of American businesses. But what would the proposal mean for our classrooms?

Teachers could lose the right to privacy in union elections. Innovative teaching strategies and school operations could be hampered by contracts and work rules imposed by federal arbitrators who know nothing about what it takes to turn a school around and help disadvantaged children succeed and thrive. In short, the very characteristics that make charter schools successful – their ability to innovate and respond to students’ needs – could be quashed by a system that puts the interests of the union ahead of the interests of the students or their teachers.

It’s a lesson about the power of special interest politics that our students should never have to learn.

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