Secret Ballots? We Don't Need No Secret Ballots?

by Chuck Muth

January 14, 2009

Big Labor came through for the Democrats last November big time. They put their man in the White House, helped expand the Democrats' majorities in Congress. Now it's payback time.

The biggest problem facing organized labor in this country today is that so many people have wised up to their scam and no longer are joining unions voluntarily. Indeed, the only membership growth area for organized labor is among government workers, not in the private sector. Go figure.

For years now, harassed and brow-beaten workers have been publicly nodding their heads in agreement just to get union organizers to leave them alone, but then in the privacy of their secret ballots they've been voting, "Thanks, but no thanks." That's why union membership today is at its lowest level in half a century.

Unable to win traditional elections fair and square, Big Labor has a new idea: Just get rid of secret elections altogether. Which is exactly what the ridiculously misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" (EFCA) would do.

Instead of workers being allowed to cast secret ballots in a union organizing election, union agitators - with or without brass knuckles and baseball bats on their shoulders - would go out and coerce workers into signing a "card" which says the worker wants the union to represent him or her. Once the union agitators collect enough pro-union "cards," the employer would be forced to recognize and negotiate with the union without a secret ballot election being held.

A better name for this bill would be the "Employee Coerced Choice Act." Either way, it stinks.

Taken to its logical conclusion, here's how elections in this country could be held in the future:

Union agitators dressed as street hoods and gang members would patrol neighborhoods, going door-to-door with slate cards featuring only Democrat candidates for offices scheduled to be on the ballot in November. Voters would be pressured to sign the slate card indicating they support the election of all the Democrats listed. And once the agitators scare the bejeepers out of a majority of voters into signing the Democrat slate cards in a given district, the election would be called off and the Democrats declared the winners.

Absurd, right? Yet if organized labor gets its way, that's exactly what will soon begin happening to workers in non-union American businesses such as Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Starbucks and even your local bank.

Barack Obama was elected by secret ballot. Rep. Hilda Solis - who has been nominated to be the next Labor Secretary - was elected to her congressional seat by secret ballot. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was elected by secret ballot. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was elected by secret ballot. And yet all of these folks support organized labor's push to deny average U.S. workers the same right to cast a vote free of coercion.

While this is certainly "change," it's also as un-American as it gets. A harbinger of things to come?