Ponder this for a moment: Have you read or heard any reasonable explanation of why it’s a good thing for workers to be denied the right to a secret ballot when voting whether to unionize?

No? Me, either. Even the New York Times, in a recent article about the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, couldn’t quite articulate the labor movement’s reasoning behind its desire to do away with secret ballots. Here’s the best the Times could do:

The bill would give workers the right to join a union as soon as a majority of employees at a workplace signed cards saying they wanted one. Business groups have attacked the legislation because it would take away employers’ right to insist on holding a secret-ballot election to determine whether workers favored unionization. …

Union officials say they do not dislike the secret ballot, but rather the lengthy, expensive, adversarial campaign before the vote in which companies often fire union supporters and use videos, large meetings and one-on-one sessions to pressure employees to vote against unionizing.

See what I mean? You have to read carefully between the lines of the second paragraph above to get even a hint of the rationale behind the move to kill secret ballots. In case you can’t quite puzzle it out, let me help: Organizing a union is typically a two-step process. First, workers are asked to sign union cards signaling their desire to organize. If enough cards are signed, a secret-ballot election on the matter is then held. The difference is that the first step is public, meaning workers can be bullied or coerced into signing the union cards. The second step is private, meaning workers can safely express their true desires. Union bosses now want to eliminate the second step in the name of protecting workers from corporate influence. In reality, they simply want the right to practice unimpeded thuggery.

At the risk of turning this into a pop quiz with endless questions, let me ask another: Have you come across any news account in which a reporter bothered to ask the people most affected by this — namely, workers in businesses targeted by union organizers — whether they liked the idea of having the right to a secret ballot taken away from them? Isn’t that, you know, pertinent?

There’s been one clear, unambiguous voice on this matter, however. It belongs to former Sen. George McGovern, a lefty’s lefty, who in a video posted on the Internet declared, “It’s hard to believe that any politician would agree to a law denying millions of employees the right to a private vote. … I’ve listened to all [union] arguments and reviewed the facts on both sides. Quite simply, this proposed law cannot be justified.”

I guess that explains why journalists have such a hard time nailing down the rationale for it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 1:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.