Reasons to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act now--Call your Congressman--
The Employee Free Choice Act
TOP PRIORITY FOR NEW DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS:
END SECRET BALLOT ELECTIONS TO DECIDE UNION REPRESENTATION
AND FORCE UNFAIR CONTRACT TERMS ON EMPLOYERS
With
Democrats in control of both Houses of Congress for the first time
since 1994, a top priority will be to eliminate the right of employees
to vote for or against unionization in secret ballot elections and to
dictate contract terms to employers.
Background
In
the last Congress, unions and their legislative allies, pushed a
brazenly misnamed bill, “The Employee Free Choice Act” (EFCA), whose
perverse goal is to deprive employees of free choice about union
representation and to intimidate employers. Amazingly, in a
Republican-controlled Congress, Big Labor found 215 sponsors for this
legislation (including 14 Republicans) in the House, just short of the
218 needed for passage; in the Senate, they signed up 44 sponsors, just
7 short of a majority. New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has
promised to place a newly introduced EFCA bill on the floor this spring
calling it a “High priority” for Democrats.
What EFCA Would Do
There
are three main components of EFCA. The central feature of the bill
would outlaw secret ballot elections by the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB) among employees to decide whether to be represented by a
union. Instead, the EFCA would permit unions to inveigle employees to
sign “authorization cards” agreeing to labor representation in front of
union agents. Second, the bill would give unions the power to invoke
outside arbitration to gain a first contract, abandoning the American
tradition of letting the parties settle their differences through good
faith collective-bargaining. In other words, Business owners would
suddenly have no one to negotiate on “first contracts” they would be
removed from the Bargaining process and forced to accept due to EFCA an
outside arbitration process without their input and the one sided and
unfair employment contracts with the unions that this would imply.
Third, the bill would increase penalties against employers for certain
labor law violations, requiring reimbursement three times the amount of
wages lost by an employee and imposing civil fines of as much as
$20,000 per incident, yet would not levy harsher sanctions for union
misconduct.
Why Authorization Cards Cannot Substitute for a Secret Ballot Election
-
Authorization cards are inherently far less reliable because they
require employees to make a public rather than a confidential decision
about unionization, thus subjecting them to peer pressure, harassment,
coercion, and misrepresentation. One study showed 18% of employees who
sign cards don’t want the union.
- Unions can
obtain commitments from employees without the employer’s knowledge and
thus gain representative status before the employer is able to make a
case as to why unionization is not in the workers’ best interest.
Key Union Arguments in Favor of EFCA and Why They are False
NLRB election processes are too slow.
According to NLRB statistics, in FY 2005, the median time between a
union’s petition for a representation election and the holding of the
election was only 38 days, and 94.2% of all elections were conducted
within 56 days of a petition.
Employers engage in
massive illegal conduct to defeat unions, discriminating against 20,000
employees per year, and the NLRB is too slow respond. In FY 2005,
the NLRB reports that it issued complaints of unlawful conduct against
employers in only 1,160 cases – a ten year low - and ordered only 2,842
employees reinstated. In FY 2005, 97.2% of cases having merit were
promptly settled; the median length of time to issue complaints in
other cases was only 95 days.
It is too hard for unions to get initial contracts with employers.
Employers are already required, under penalty of law, to bargain with
unions in good faith. Employers should not be forced to submit to
onerous terms imposed by a third party that may jeopardize jobs and
profitability.