Posted on 06/21/2007 4:45:40 AM PDT by IrishMike
Americans enjoy so many rights and privileges, we sometimes seem to take them for granted. But if we aren’t willing to fight for them, they could easily be taken away. Consider, for instance, the secret ballot. Fewer private-sector workers belong to a union today than at any point since the turn of the 20th century. So to boost their numbers, union activists want to organize through what’s known as a “card-check” system. Instead of continuing to allow workers to vote in government-supervised elections, workers would sign a union card.
Card check, though, redefines high-pressure tactics. Union organizers come to workers’ homes, give them a heavy-handed sales pitch and demand they sign the card. The union knows exactly which workers haven’t signed, and they return to their homes, again and again, until they give in.
It’s no surprise that unions find it’s easier to organize workers with card check. But they’re only allowed to use card-check if a company waives its employee’s right to a private vote, which few companies voluntarily do. That’s why Big Labor wants Congress to pass the ironically named “Employee Free Choice Act” — to abolish organizing elections and require workers to join a union using publicly signed cards.
How can they get away with this? Well, unions argue, the private-ballot process has broken down and needs to be abolished. But there’s no real evidence of that.
Sure, union leaders point to a poll that claimed 60 million non-union workers want to join a union and would if the system allowed them to. But that survey was dubious at best. It was commissioned by the AFL-CIO and conducted by a Democratic pollster whose methodology has never been released.
Publicly released polls by nonpartisan pollsters show very different results. Zogby polling shows that, by a 74 to 20 percent margin, non-union workers want to stay that way. Union membership is declining because most workers don’t want to join. If they wanted to join, they would, well, vote to do so.
But maybe not, the AFL-CIO insists. It claims employers systematically intimidate workers into voting against a union by illegally firing pro-union workers. It alleges this happens in one quarter of all organizing elections.
“Instead of continuing to allow workers to vote in government-supervised elections, workers would sign a union card.”
Why would anyone not be in favor of government supervision?/s.
Commie Union goons at it again.
Maybe the card check system should be used in the 2008 US Presidential election to avoid hanging chads and create a proper paper trail. Secret ballots are an unwise unfair infringement on the right to to get elected.
For union goons Google Images “Sophia Parlock.”
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