Fighting card check and winning
By John Loudon
Brett Joshpe, 01.08.09, 12:01 AM EST
Now is no time to strengthen labor.
The emergence of China as an economic powerhouse and the ebb of the American economy have many experts demanding that America start producing more goods.
While there is some sense to that sentiment, it should not be used to justify new forms of protectionism, Detroit bailouts or enhanced power for Big Labor. If America is going to create a globally competitive manufacturing industry, it must deregulate and disarm unions like the United Auto Workers that have driven up labor costs and made competing with foreign companies exceedingly difficult.
Democrats and the incoming Obama Administration, however, are gearing up to empower labor unions by passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would end requirements for secret ballots when workers are voting on whether to unionize.
Ending secret ballot elections, which first emerged in the U.S. during Reconstruction to protect recently freed slaves, will provide significant opportunity for voter intimidation and greatly strengthen the labor bloc during a time of historic economic vulnerability. In addition to depriving workers of the right to vote by secret ballot, the EFCA also would mandate binding arbitration in the event management and labor are unable to reach a collective bargaining agreement.
As America's flailing automobile industry demonstrates, strengthening labor--especially when labor costs drive companies to the cusp of bankruptcy--is not always in the best interests of the worker and certainly not the economy at large. The EFCA is a drastic and dangerous measure, but fortunately grassroots organizations are mobilizing for a legal fight to stop it.
One group, SOS Ballots (Save Our Secret Ballots), is pushing for constitutional amendments in several states, as well as Washington, D.C., that would require secret ballot voting "where state or federal law requires elections for public office or public votes on initiatives or referenda, or designations or authorizations of employee representation."
The strategy will surely meet constitutional challenge by advocates of the EFCA. Because Congress would pass the EFCA pursuant to its broad powers to regulate interstate commerce, resolution of the issue would turn on the Supreme Court's interpretation of the "dormant" Commerce Clause, which is a legal doctrine that balances Congress' explicit preemptive authority to regulate commerce with a state's legitimate health and safety regulations that may have incidental effects on commerce.