EFCA Mythbusting - Union Can’t Organizing Under Secret Ballots

By Ted Phlegar

The Wall Street Journal carried a solid editorial today exposing the hypocrisy of Change to Win Chair Anna Burger who criticized American businesses receiving federal TARP funds for lobbying against labor related bills, including the Employee Free Choice Act, arguing that federal funding should cease because of the lobbying activities. The hypocrisy lies in the fact that her own union, the Service Employees International Union, received federal funds of more than $1.5 million in 2002 & 2003 while it heavily lobbied the Department of Health & Human Services.

I applaud the Journal for an excellent and relevant editorial; however, I am compelled to correct a particularly persistent myth about union organizing without card check under the National Labor Relations Act and current National Labor Relations Board rules. The piece reads: "They [the labor unions] also know they haven’t been able to organize workers with a level playing field, so they want to rewrite the rules so their organizers can see which individual workers are voting no and apply peer and other pressure." This false statement has been repeated so many times that it has taken on a patina of truth that must be dulled. 

Let’s set the record straight. Union organizing is successful without card check. The deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act is NOT needed for unions to successfully organize workers. It simply makes it easier, cheaper and provides an under-the-radar method of organizing which avoids the union having to deal with an employer expressing an opinion on unionization. It de-levels the playing field.

Union organizing has been and continues to be successful under the secret ballot scheme. The rhetoric that labor unions cannot survive without card check is a falsehood that should be staked through the heart once and for all. In 2007, total union membership in the United States increased. In 2008, it happened again, with an even bigger increase. The SEIU has been touting its increasing membership for years as the "fastest growing union in America." 

The National Labor Relations Board administers collective bargaining elections to insure they are done in a fair and impartial way. From October of 1999 to the present, there have been 18,137 organizing elections held for workplaces without any incumbent union. The labor unions have been successfully elected in 58.5% of these. Of the 418 elections held in the current fiscal year, labor unions have been successful in 62.8% of them. The majority of times, unions are winning these elections. Any statement to the contrary is simply wrong.  Any statement that unions cannot successfully organize workers with a level playing field is equally wrong.  The difference is that it’s harder, it costs more and the union must work for it honestly and openly.

Unions win secret ballot elections the majority of the time. That is an absolute fact. Union membership is increasing, another fact. So why is there a persistent lie that labor unions cannot get a fair election without EFCA?  Because this propaganda serves labor’s financial interests.  Under a secret ballot, a union must persuade the workforce that unionization is in their best interests and must do so while the employer is free to exercise its right to speak out with a contrary opinion.  A union must back up its argument with facts and accurate information and it must spend resources communicating its points to the workers and must do so in a limited period of time. By contrast, under card check, a union can use misinformation, melodrama or intimidation more freely to obtain individual worker’s signatures on cards voting for the union. Often, an employer will not have an opportunity to present opposing facts or express its own opinion. The union’s case is not subjected to the crucible of open debate because they wish to run a submarine campaign.

The unions do not want a level playing field and work hard to slant the odds in their favor. For conformation, look at two of the guidelines for a "free and fair election" posted on the SEIU run website, www.fairunionelections.org: 

Management agrees to abstain from spending any patient care resources on efforts to dissuade employees from unionizing.

Management does not take a position on unionization.

How can any election scheme so one sided ever be called fair? Easily, if hypocrisy is just another tool in the toolkit next to misinformation, melodrama and fear-mongering. Why aren’t truth, persuasion, honesty and open debate in that toolkit instead? 

The fabrication that labor unions cannot organize workers with a level playing field should be put to rest, once and for all.