thetruthaboutefca.com | The Truth About The Employee Free Choice Act & Card Check

As employer groups and free market advocates have been saying for years, the secret ballot elections process for choosing union representation is the best guarantee against retribution fro an employee’s preference. Union officials and their allies have played coy and said there’s no such need for protecting privacy and they’ve tried — increasingly unsuccessfully — to bring Congressional Democrats with them.

Thankfully, many Democrats, especially in the Senate, have decided that the Employee Free Choice Act’s secret-ballot-reducing “card check” provision. And now, even if unintentionally, they are raising the possibility of using secret ballots in their own chairmanship decisions, as reported by The Hill’s Alexander Bolton today:

In an apparent warning to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), some liberal Democrats have suggested a secret-ballot vote every two years on whether or not to strip committee chairmen of their gavels.

Baucus, who is more conservative than most of the Democratic Conference, has frustrated many of his liberal colleagues by negotiating for weeks with Republicans over healthcare reform without producing a bill or even much detail about the policies he is considering.

“Every two years the caucus could have a secret ballot on whether a chairman should continue, yes or no,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “If the ‘no’s win, [the chairman’s] out.

Sen. Harkin’s warmth for secret ballots is particularly welcome news since he has taken the lead on pushing EFCA or some form of labor law reform. We trust this principle will carry over to the ongoing conversation about labor law reform.

P.S. — We suppose there’s only one question left. EFCA’s card check provision has always been written to only deny secret ballots when the union wants to get in to represent new employees, but it has never been written to allow employees to get rid of the union through the same process. We hope Sen. Harkin and his colleagues will ensure that whatever process is used to get the union a “yes” will be reflected “If the ‘no’s win, [the union's] out.”

UPDATE: A reminder of other Democrats who have taken a stand for secret ballots.