McGovern’s Right

Employers and organized labor are gearing up for a titanic battle over proposed federal legislation to alter the way unions are formed and recognized by management.

At stake is the decades-old system of asking workers in secret ballot elections overseen by impartial federal officials whether they want to unionize. The Employee Free Choice Act would end secret ballot elections and require management to recognize any union that obtains the signatures of a majority of workers.

Management and organized labor agree that replacing secret ballot elections with the so-called “card check” would dramatically improve labor’s chances to unionize private-sector workers.

The bill is emerging as an issue in the presidential campaign because Barack Obama co-sponsored it and promised to sign it if elected, while John McCain strongly opposes it.

That’s why Wal-Mart managers touched off a storm when they told workers that a Democratic victory in November would likely mean a major change in federal law, one that could force them to pay large union dues, endure strikes without compensation and job cuts.

Labor cried foul. Several unions are pushing for a probe to see if the retailer’s campaign violated federal election laws because it implicitly advocates a vote against Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee.

Union officials say Wal-Mart’s tactics are yet another example of management’s union-busting. And that’s the problem with secret ballot elections, they argue. The very act of setting an election date gives management time to mount a campaign against union organizers.

Employers, naturally, take the opposite position. They say the secret ballot protects workers – who may be reluctant to shell out union dues – from union intimidation. If all a union needs to do to be recognized is to gather a majority of signatures, what’s to stop organizers from harassing or intimidating workers into signing?

In fact, both sides have at times crossed the line with improper strong-arm tactics.

Two quick examples. In June, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Wal-Mart illegally fired a pro-union employee in Arizona. And, closer to home, some workers at the Connecticut Convention Center and Hartford Marriott Downtown were mad enough at organizers of Unite Here for trying to push their way in without an employee vote two years ago that they ran to the media in protest.

While labor and management claim to represent workers’ best interests, both groups have private agendas as well. Management feels pressured to run lean, to slash costs and hold payrolls down. Labor is under pressure to survive. Unions now represent only 7.5 percent of private-sector workers, less than half of their share 25 years ago.

While organizers tend to prevail in secret ballot elections – they win half to two-thirds of the time – they aim to do away with them.

Officials of the Service Employees Internatinal Union have been quoted as saying the EFTC Act would allow them to organize 1 million new members per year, instead of their current annual recruitment of 100,000.

So the bill serves labor’s self-interest while it undercuts the interests of both management and workers. It deserves to be rejected.

Former Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic nominee for president and a self-described “long-time friend of labor unions,” put it eloquently in a recent opinion article in The Wall Street Journal when he wrote:

“We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.”