"Employee Free Choice Act"
Even supporters of this proposed legislation must wonder about the Orwellian title. Eliminating secret ballots and the name of this bill is a combination that defies logic.
The current practice, in place since the Roosevelt enacted National Labor Relations Act of 1935, gives workers the right to organize and build consensus based on the card-check method. This leads to a secret ballot election run by the National Labor Relations Board. The current proposal lets the card-check method alone certify a union. If someone thinks that this is not subject to coercion that is at least as significant as what companies are accused of, then they have no view of union history. If the current rules have flaws why not refine rules, step up enforcement, and raise penalties for impeding the current secret ballot method. Mandate equal dissemination of information between union advocates and management. Give the National Labor Relations Board more supervisory responsibility prior to as well as during an election.
The proposed bill as currently structured, at least based on googling efforts here, has no provisions dealing with the responsibities of the unions and requirements and penalties for abusing this system if it is put into place. While today many unions focused on private sector business are apparently reasonably responsible and nowhere near as corrupt as unions of old, in the public sector, especially at the state levels where patronage is afoot, often unions are every bit as actively corrupt and inflexible as ever(there are always so many examples of this, everywhere around me in New York, but my recent favorite was the discovery that 97% of Long Island Railroad unionized employees retire on disability despite the fact that the LIRR has one of the best safety records in its industry). There should be no presumed saints here, business or union, and any proposed changes to the law should address both sides of the equation.
Near unanimous support among Democrats for this bill is a result of three factors: union members tend to be reliable Democratic voters; unions themselves are reliable Democratic contributors; and, maybe most importantly, despite the current rules on secret ballots, according to an MIT study unions are successful in organization efforts under current rules only 20% of the time. The reasons for this could be made more transparent if the current rules were significantly strengthened before ditching what seems like a fundamental principal of democratic governance.
If any reader wants to explain this in a better way, please hold forth.
The current practice, in place since the Roosevelt enacted National Labor Relations Act of 1935, gives workers the right to organize and build consensus based on the card-check method. This leads to a secret ballot election run by the National Labor Relations Board. The current proposal lets the card-check method alone certify a union. If someone thinks that this is not subject to coercion that is at least as significant as what companies are accused of, then they have no view of union history. If the current rules have flaws why not refine rules, step up enforcement, and raise penalties for impeding the current secret ballot method. Mandate equal dissemination of information between union advocates and management. Give the National Labor Relations Board more supervisory responsibility prior to as well as during an election.
The proposed bill as currently structured, at least based on googling efforts here, has no provisions dealing with the responsibities of the unions and requirements and penalties for abusing this system if it is put into place. While today many unions focused on private sector business are apparently reasonably responsible and nowhere near as corrupt as unions of old, in the public sector, especially at the state levels where patronage is afoot, often unions are every bit as actively corrupt and inflexible as ever(there are always so many examples of this, everywhere around me in New York, but my recent favorite was the discovery that 97% of Long Island Railroad unionized employees retire on disability despite the fact that the LIRR has one of the best safety records in its industry). There should be no presumed saints here, business or union, and any proposed changes to the law should address both sides of the equation.
Near unanimous support among Democrats for this bill is a result of three factors: union members tend to be reliable Democratic voters; unions themselves are reliable Democratic contributors; and, maybe most importantly, despite the current rules on secret ballots, according to an MIT study unions are successful in organization efforts under current rules only 20% of the time. The reasons for this could be made more transparent if the current rules were significantly strengthened before ditching what seems like a fundamental principal of democratic governance.
If any reader wants to explain this in a better way, please hold forth.
posted by John Borden at 12:12 PM
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