Stripped of hysterical rhetoric, EFCA worth a look

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.bangornews.com/detail/98321.html

1/29/09

Lisa Feldman

Proposed changes to federal labor law don’t often provoke media furor. The big exception is the Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA, which would change the way unions are certified as bargaining agents by the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB. What’s the big deal?

Certification begins when workers sign authorization cards, indicating that they would like to be represented by a particular union. Under current law, if more than 50 percent of employees sign cards, the employer can decide that this “card check” — overseen and validated by the NLRB — constitutes a de facto election and recognize the union. Or the boss can refuse to recognize the card check and require a secret ballot vote. It’s the employer’s choice.

EFCA would shift this decision to the employees. If they want a secret ballot, they get one. If they don’t, no secret ballot would occur, as long as a majority signs cards indicating a preference for union representation. There are, of course, safeguards. Allegations of illegal coercion, for example, would trigger a secret ballot.

It seems simple. Yet nearly all the media frenzy surrounding EFCA — those TV ads, the OpEds, the phony telephone polls — stems from this change.

EFCA opponents seem to believe that competent adults — people who regularly say no to drugs, telemarketers, and their own teenage children — find it so inherently intimidating to be asked to sign a union authorization card that they invariably do so without a whimper of protest. They say that the only fair vote is by secret ballot.

EFCA supporters point out that many votes usually considered fair are not secret: a show of hands in a public meeting, a voice or roll-call vote in a legislative assembly. Nor does a secret ballot necessarily guarantee a fair election.

FULL story at link.

[terisan]

1. thanks for posting this clear explanation. nt