Secret Ballot Watch

Worker intimidation is just one of many, many reasons why the Employee Free Choice Act should not become law.  

But, as Wall Street Journal editorial board member Matthew Kaminski recently reported, this practice is allegedly underway already as two unions duke it out in California. 

On one side is the Service Employees International Union, a big time EFCA booster whose president, Andy Stern, is a frequent White House visitor. On the other side is a rival labor outfit, the National Union of Healthcare Workers.  

Kaminski gives the blow-by-blow account here: 

“Now these upstarts charge that the UHW threatened workers with deportation and tampered with secret ballots to narrowly win a pivotal election last summer in Fresno, Calif. The NUHW allegations, contained in a complaint filed last Friday and previously not made public, take the battle to a new level. 

“The June vote was in a ‘decertification’ election—in which some 10,000 home-care workers were asked to choose between the UHW that already represented them or the NUHW. Old labor hands say they've never seen a decertification vote like this.  

“The SEIU shipped in 950 or so staff and spent an estimated $10 million on mailings, advertising, phone banks, door-to-door canvassing and the like. The NUHW doesn't have this kind of firepower. At a rally for staff in late May, David Regan, an SEIU executive vice president who took over the UHW in January, roared that, ‘We gotta give a butt-whipping they will never forget.’ When the secret ballots were mailed in and counted, the SEIU won that vote by a sliver, 2,938 to 2,705.  

“The NUHW immediately called for a re-run of the election, challenging voting irregularities. The two unions have traded accusations since. But now, Carlos Martinez, an immigrant from El Salvador who was on the SEIU's staff during the campaign, has come forward—so he says—to blow the whistle on his employer. Mr. Martinez went door-to-door canvassing the home-care workers during the 15-day election. Like him, many of them are native Spanish speakers; some are illiterate. 

“Speaking in an interview over a sandwich at a hotel in the Bay Area late last month, Mr. Martinez says he was instructed by superiors to tell the workers that if they voted against the SEIU, they could lose their medical benefits, see their green cards or citizenship revoked and possibly be deported. He says he and other staffers were also told to pressure voters to spoil ballots that had been filled out for the NUHW. In other instances he filled ballots out for them. He says he even took some to the post office, as did other SEIU campaign workers.  

“All of these actions, if true, are a violation of state or federal laws governing union elections. In all, he adds, he visited 550 homes. ‘We scared people. We took the secret ballot away from these people,’ he says. ‘It was wrong.’” 

Kaminski, “California Labor Wars” The Wall Street Journal, 11.11.09

If worker intimidation is the name of the game in union disputes today, imagine what could happen across the country if EFCA becomes law. It’s bad enough that EFCA could harm a recovering economy. But threatening workers nationwide makes it even worse. That’s why lawmakers should scrap EFCA and pass this proposal instead.

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