What does EFCA means for Workplace Democracy?
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The deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) strips workers of their right to a government-supervised, private-ballot vote and replaces it with a forced-unionization system, where workers must publicly declare their support for a union and publicly sign a binding contract without seeing the “fine print.” After 51% sign up, the remaining 49% of workers never get a choice.
At its core, EFCA is an undemocratic power grab by special-interest union lobbyists. It strips workers of their right to privacy and exposes them to intimidation, deception, and coercion.
Why Do Union Bosses Want Forced Unionization?
 UNITE-HERE President Bruce Raynor |
It is clear why unions are desperately pressuring Congressional candidates to pledge support for a forced unionization bill: Union membership has declined drastically over the years, from almost 20 percent of the private-sector workforce twenty-five years ago to just 7.5 percent today.
So union bosses needed to come up with a new way to increase their membership. And as UNITE HERE union president Bruce Raynor candidly admitted to The New York Times, “There’s no reason to subject the workers to an election.”
Who’s Against Forced Unionization?
- The American Public: 87 percent of Americans support a federally-supervised, private ballot election to decide unionization.
- The U.S. Supreme Court: The Court wrote that the forced unionization system imposed by EFCA is “inferior to the election process.”
- Union Officials, but only when they benefit from a private ballot election: The AFL-CIO supports private ballot elections for removing a union. Because they “provide the surest means for avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressures and not individual decisions.”
- Leading Democratic Supporters of EFCA, but only when the union elections are in Mexico: As 15 Democratic Congressmen—including many supporters of EFCA—wrote to Mexican labor authorities: “We understand that the private ballot is allowed for, but not required, by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the private ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose.”
Facts vs. Myths about the Employee Free Choice Act
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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and when it comes to the labor movement, union bosses are willing to say just about anything to justify the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act. Whether it’s union-funded professors, politicians, or think tanks, labor leaders have paid groups to perpetuate lies about the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act.
Union Myth: EFCA wouldn’t eliminate a worker’s access to private-ballot elections. It only gives workers the option of using the “majority signup” system.
Fact: EFCA puts the union—and only the union—in charge of unionizing. There is no required option for employee input. Numerous union organizers have publicly stated that they have no interest in calling for private-ballot elections:
SEIU Union Official Mike Fishman“There’s no need to subject the workers to an election.”
– Bruce Raynor, UNITE HERE union president“We don't do elections.”
– Mike Fishman, high-ranking SEIU union leader
Union Myth: “Nonunion workers who say they want to have a union in their workplace: 60 million.”
Fact: This comes from an unpublished poll commissioned by labor unions and conducted by union-friendly pollsters. Without knowing what question they asked, it is impossible to judge its credibility. And given their refusal to release the poll, we suspect its credibility is weak at best.
In fact, a recent poll of 1,000 Americans by the Opinion Research Corporation found that 64 percent of workers would prefer that their job be non-union (The question: “Would you prefer your present job to be union or would you prefer it to be non-union?”)
Union Myth: “Chance that an active union supporter will be illegally fired for union activity during an organizing campaign: 1 in 5.”
Fact: This statistic comes from a group of labor-affiliated researchers using outdated data from the 1980s and arbitrary estimates — one of the researchers even acknowledged it was “a crude probability” — to come to their ultimate conclusion.
In fact, according to data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), just 1 in 340 pro-union employees are wrongly terminated during the course of an organizing campaign.
Related Union Myth: “Workers in 2005 who received back pay because of illegal employer discrimination for activities legally protected under the National Labor Relations Act: 31,358.”
Fact: This number includes employees paid back pay for a variety of reasons unrelated to organizing a union, such as disputes regarding overtime, work rules, or other contractual deputes. Data from the NLRB indicates that just 2.7% of organizing campaigns involve an employee who was wrongly terminated.
Union Myth: “Employers that threaten to call U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during organizing drives that include undocumented employees: 52%; companies that threaten to close the plant if the union wins the election: 51%; companies that actually close their plants after a successful union election: 1%.”
Fact: NLRB data indicates that only 2.6% of organizational campaigns result in a charge against a business for making threatening or coercive statements.
Questions and Answers about the Employee Free Choice Act
What is the Employee Free Choice Act?
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The deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) strips workers of their right to a government-supervised, private-ballot vote and replaces it with a forced-unionization system, where workers must publicly declare their support for a union and sign a binding contract in public without seeing the “fine print.”
At its core, EFCA is an undemocratic power grab by special interest union lobbyists. It trashes workers right to privacy and exposes them to intimidation, deception, and coercion from union bosses and even their co-workers and friends.
Why Union Bosses Want EFCA?
America’s labor unions are on the verge of extinction. Between changing economic conditions and labor bosses’ inept leadership, private-sector union membership has fallen to a dismal 50-year low of just 7.4%. National polls show that most Americans would prefer not to be in a union. Given that, labor bosses know that without a radical change in the process of creating a union, the prospect of their survival is low.
How does EFCA change the law?
For the last 60 years, workers have used government-supervised, private-ballot elections–similar to the system used to elect Senators or the President–to vote on unionizing. But for the last decade, unions have lost many private-ballot elections because of unions’ declining popularity.
To remedy this, EFCA replaces the private-ballot election with a “card check” system, where paid union organizers can corner employees at their homes, in parking lots, or even at church and ask–or, as is often the case, intimidate–them to sign a legally binding union contract (or “card”) without even seeing the fine print.
Sometimes the cards misleadingly suggest there will ultimately be an election, but under EFCA, no election is necessary. Once the union has signatures from a majority of employees, the union exists. The remaining 49% of employees have no option to express their opinion on joining a union.
Some EFCA supporters dishonestly claim that the bill gives workers the option of either a private-ballot vote or a publically-signed contract as their “vote.” But there is no means of gauging the workers’ preference on which method to use. In fact, union bosses choose the process they want, and they have clearly stated said they will exclusively use “card check” contracts, should EFCA become law.
Who’s Against an EFCA Workplace?
The American Public: Opinion polls consistently show that Americans overwhelmingly support a worker’s right to a private-ballot election and oppose an EFCA workplace.
- 87 percent of Americans support a federally supervised secret ballot election to decide unionization.
– McLaughlin & Associates, 2007
- 75 percent of the public supports secret ballot elections over EFCA rules.
– Opinion Research Corporation, 2006
- 77 percent of voters in Maine, 72 percent of voters in Colorado, and 72 percent of voters in Minnesota support secret ballot elections over EFCA rules.
– McLaughlin & Associates, 2008
Leading Democratic Supporters of EFCA, when it’s Mexico: Many leading supporters of EFCA wrote a letter to Mexican labor athorities requesting they institute a private ballot election system, yet they seek just the opposite under EFCA:
“[W]e feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose. We respect Mexico as an important neighbor and trading partner, and we feel that the increased use of the secret ballot in union recognition elections will help bring real democracy to the Mexican workplace.”
Read the entire letter. (.pdf)
U.S. Courts: Numerous state and federal courts have ruled that "card check" contracts are inherently inferior to private ballot elections:
“The unreliability of the cards … is inherent, as we have noted, in the absence of secrecy and in the natural inclination of most people to avoid stands which appear to be nonconformist and antagonistic to friends and fellow employees.”
“We would be closing our eyes to obvious difficulties, of course, if we did not recognize that there have been [card solicitation] abuses, primarily arising out of misrepresentations by union organizers.”
– U.S. Supreme Court, 1969“Freedom of choice is a matter at the very center of our national labor relations policy, and a secret election is the preferred method of gauging choice.”
– District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, 1991“Workers sometimes sign union authorization cards not because they intend to vote for the union in the election but to avoid offending the person who asks them to sign, often a fellow worker, or simply to get the person off their back.”
– Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, 1983“It would be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a ‘card check,’ unless it were an employer’s request for an open show of hands.”
– Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, 1967“[I]t is beyond dispute that a secret election is a more accurate reflection of the employees’ true desires than a check of authorization cards collected at the behest of a union organizer.”
– Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 1965
Union Officials, when they benefit from a real election: The AFL-CIO supports private ballot elections in union decertification petitions (voting the union out of a workplace) because they “provide the surest means for avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressures and not individual decisions.”
How EFCA Effectively Eliminates Private Ballot Elections
| NLRB pledge cards are at best a signifying intention at a given moment. Sometimes they are signed to ‘get the union off my back’… Whatever the reason, there is no guarantee of anything in a signed NLRB pledge card except that it will count toward an NLRB election. —AFL-CIO “Guidebook for Union Organizers |
Currently, if a significant proportion of a company's employees sign "authorization" cards seeking union representation a labor organization can petition the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold an election—an election that is conducted by a secret ballot and overseen by neutral federal regulators.
Under the Employee Free Choice Act's (EFCA) proposed rules the union may seek certification without a private vote once a majority of targeted employees have signed cards. They may also seek a government imposed labor contract on wages, benefits and working conditions. All of this is possible despite well documented evidence that these cards are often signed under coercive or intimidating circumstances and do not represent informed intent.
Unions argue they will still rely on secret ballots if EFCA becomes law. This is highly unlikely.
| "Have 70–75 percent of members sign cards; if unable to reach this goal, review plan." —New England Nurses Association |
Currently, unions rarely—if ever—request an NLRB election with cards representing less than 65 percent of a company's employees. In fact, many internal union policies explicitly prohibit the practice of going into an election without cards representing 65 percent or more of a bargaining unit.
Suggesting that unions would call for an election once they clear the 50 percent plus one bar defies all logic. No one would argue that a union organizer would risk calling for an election—and possibly losing—when he or she has already satisfied the criteria to obtain certification.
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