Card Check - The Silenced Minority

by Brad Peck

I have certainly read more and thought more than the majority of the American public about Card Check but occasionally I find a perspective I hadn't fully processed before and am abhorred anew.  This line from a comment on the Employee Free Choice Act Blog line triggered such a thought:

The union did not talk to any road drivers who were formerly Overnite and concentrated on dock workers for their 50% card checkers.

Perhaps it isn't the lack of "Free" choice that is most damning; it is the lack of choice at all. As Townhall puts it:

In essence, this act wouldn't just eliminate the secret ballot, it would actually eliminate the ballot.  ... So yes, this effectively would eliminate the secret ballot by rendering it a moot point.  Once the cards are collected, there is no need for an election -- businesses are mandated to begin negotiating only with the union representative.

Of course, there might be a potential balance here if the card-collection procedure were also available for de-unionization.  The vast majority of Union members today never voted to join a union (it came with the job).  And, of course, there is no easy way to opt out of unionization.  So if Unions would allow the same rules to apply when workers want to opt-out of unionization (collect cards from more than half of the workers saying they no longer want to be in a union), this would be a consistent and palatable argument. 

The real goal, of course, is not to be fair, but to unionize more workers.  And, of course, the unions are ignoring people who bring up that idea -- because the vast majority of currently unionized workers never voted to enter a union, and the bosses are scared that they would get voted out.

So essentially they want to be able to harass you into signing a card to unionize yourself, then make it hard for you to get out of the deal when you figure out that you’ve been gamed. Yeah…that sounds like “Employee Free Choice” to me!

Plus given the arbitration provision, not only would, potentially, 49% of the workers have no choice on forming a union, after 120 days 100% of the workers would have no choice on what their contract looks like. How is this even on the table?