Card Checks and Balances

Today, the increasingly conservative Washington Post editorial board against the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill passed by the House that would permit workers to form a union using a card check system rather than a lengthy election process. I don't think I've said anything about this issue yet, but as a former UAW member who has been through a union certification process, allow me to say a few words.

The Post's first objection, that workers would be subject to coercion by the union to sign the card, is a bugaboo: the data shows that union coercion is lower in card check elections. And besides, coercion by management is always the bigger problem (both quantitatively and qualitatively), and the data also shows that card checks reduce that by half.

I practically did a spit take when I read their second objection. I'm surprised they didn't just admit that it came from some Chamber of Commerce talking points:

The so-called card-check arrangement would give labor too much power to spring unions on employers. Employers who don't want to see their workers organize deserve a chance to make that case to employees in advance of the decision.

Oh, pity the poor, powerless employer… Look, employers get to make their anti-union case to their workers every single day. Some use carrots, some use sticks. In the end, that case might not be convincing, but it is absurd to suggest that employers aren't given a a chance to communicate it.

To be fair, the Post does say that the current system is tilted too far in favor of employers, and they suggest a number of tweaks to the system: shorter elections, greater union access to the workplace, and harsher penalties for intimidation by employers. But this seems to me to be just another way of skirting the main issue, which is: if a majority of workers want a union, they should get one. And since card check is the fairest way to determine the will of the majority, it should be allowed. QED.

Of course, we're not going to get card check this year, as the Post rightly notes. The Senate probably won't pass it, and the President would never sign it. But are any of the changes that the Post suggests any more politically realistic? Frankly, I don't see the Bush administration voluntarily doing anything to make union organizing easier. Hell, the DOL won't even enforce the weak laws we currently have; stronger penalties for breaking laws that are never enforced isn't really an answer. And besides, the EFCA and election reforms aren't mutually exclusive, since the EFCA doesn't do away with elections — it just adds card check as an option.

If the Post would just come straight out and say that they believe unions are a bad thing, I could respect that — at least then their opposition to card check would be consistent. But as it is, they're just incoherent.