The so-called Employee Free Choice Act was a bad idea in the spring, when it was re-introduced in Congress, and it is still a bad idea now.
That’s what the editors of The Daily News in Newburyport, Mass., said recently about the act that’s been sitting in the Senate for months.
The “card check" provisions in the act alone make it worthy of rejection, explains the paper's editorial:
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“The act is an extraordinarily bad idea, one that Congress should reject simply on the flaws of the way that elections will be handled.
“With the card check option, workers never hear the full story of whether unionizing is the right move for them. They'll hear the union's pitch, but they won't hear the perspective from the company management. What's more, it deprives workers of their right to a private vote. It's much easier to coerce someone into signing a card than it is to persuade them to approve a union in a federally supervised secret-ballot vote, which is the system in place now.
“Secret ballots are essential to the democratic process. Secret ballots are good enough to put members of Congress in office, to elect our mayors, selectmen, governors and state lawmakers. They should be good enough to determine whether workers want to form unions."
Editorial, "'Free Choice Act' isn't about freedom of choice, " The Daily News (Newburyport, Mass.), 07.23.09
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True, rumors have been swirling about a potential “compromise" that would jettison the politically toxic card check plan to do away with secret ballots and replace it with equally damaging limitations on the way workers form unions. But the reality is that card check and the rest of this economically devastating scheme remain very much on the table - which is why editorial pages from coast to coast continue speaking out against this anti-worker plan.
The Daily News and many others are right. Secret ballots are essential to the democratic process, which is why Republicans want to make sure they stay protected. That’s the only way to ensure fairness when organizing a workplace.
