America
Big Labor Threatening Secret Ballot Vote
Slipping membership numbers are behind a frantic push for new legislation. B BY TODD BEAMON
ig labor is push- ing a revival of the once-defunct card-check sys-
tem, which would end secret union ballots on whether to join a union, and replace them with public votes. Doing that, opponents warn, invites union intimidation. Buoyed by President
Barack Obama’s re-election and the $400 million that unions poured into the 2012 elections, labor chiefs are confident that their No. 1 legislative priority will come to pass this time around. “You’ll see it,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told The Atlantic, guarantee- ing that card check will pass before Obama leaves office. “Card checks and getting rid of the secret ballot is the holy grail of union organizing,” says James Sherk, a fellow with the Heritage Founda- tion. “Card checks make it tremen- dously easy to organize workers.” Like Sherk, many analysts say work-
ers will be less likely to vote against union representation if they know their names will be made known to union toughs. Getting rid of secret bal- lots, he says, “looks kind of thuggish.” One look at union membership
rolls and it’s easy to see why big labor is looking for help. Last year, union membership fell to its lowest level
18 NEWSMAX | MAY 2013
PERFECT UNION Obama stands behind the AFL- CIO’s Richard Trumka at an economic conference in D.C.
is giving you the right to work for less money.” Indiana enacted a sim-
ilar law in 2012. And Wis- consin voters upset union plans to recall Repub- lican Gov. Scott Walker after he limited collective- bargaining rights for pub- lic-sector workers. Sherk says unions have only themselves to blame for their fading popularity. “They just haven’t been able to make a persuasive case to enough workers that unionization will benefit them,” he says. “Rather than modern- izing their product, their goal is to, essentially, make it difficult for work- ers to say no.” Hence, card check — and big labor — is already
since 1916. That year, 11.2 percent of the American workforce belonged to a union, according to a Rutgers Univer- sity study. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
reports that union membership fell from 11.8 percent in 2011 to 11.3 per- cent in 2012. Labor’s slump comes as Michigan
became the 24th right-to-work state. Before the vote, Obama told work- ers “what they’re really talking about
working with Obama to get it. Mark Mix, president of the Nation-
al Right to Work Legal Foundation, tells Newsmax: “The only solution for Richard Trumka is to go to his good buddy at the White House, Barack Obama, and convince him that they’ve got to make a push to compel workers to join unions.” Card-check legislation, The Employee Free Choice Act, died in a Democratic-controlled Senate in
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