Opinion: Workers seeking to organize need more protection

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_11388101

By Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Oscar Dace

Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 01/06/2009 08:00:00 PM PST

Barack Obama's victory was decisive, hardly the kind of election to prompt a national debate about fairness of the ballot box. But the incoming president has pledged his support for changing how workers exercise their right to choose union representation, making electoral reform in the workplace a hot political issue.

The debate focuses on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), returning to Congress after dying of a Republican filibuster in 2007. The act would remedy the bias favoring employers in current labor law, primarily by letting workers choose union recognition by signing membership cards — "card check" — but also by increasing penalties when employers break the law.

Employers currently can dictate that an election be held if workers wish to organize. Conservatives such as columnist George Will frame the free choice act as abolishing "workers' right to a secret ballot in unionization votes." But under the National Labor Relations Act, these elections are as free and democratic as elections in Russia under Vladimir Putin — so rigged in the employer's favor that they are invoked exclusively as a union-thwarting tactic.

Imagine, for example, a presidential election in which the:

# Incumbent (employer) threatens opposition voters and his penalty, if caught, is writing an apology.

# Incumbent (employer) legally delays an election by months or years until opposing voters move away or give up.

# Voters (workers) are required to attend campaign rallies for the incumbent and be browbeaten during one-on-one meetings with ruling party officials.

# Voters (workers) are required to cast their ballots at the incumbent's party headquarters under the nose of his party bosses.

# Challenger (union) manages to win, but the incumbent refuses to accept the vote and legally remains in office during years of litigation.

FULL story at link.