With Dems In Control of Congress, Unions Are Up tTo Their Old Tricks

Coercion, fraud, and vote-fixing:

Disgruntled conservatives who argued last fall that it would make no difference whether Republicans or Democrats were in charge of Congress should pay close attention this week.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is prepared to vote on legislation that would make it easier for organized labor to coerce workers into unionizing by denying employees the right to a secret ballot election. The legislation, which went nowhere under Republican control, now has 233 co-sponsors and is expected to sail through the House.

The sorry state of organized labor was reinforced last month when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing that union membership had dropped to 12 percent of the U.S workforce. This was the lowest level recorded in the more than two decades that the BLS has been tracking union membership regularly and represents a steady decline from the heyday of organized labor in the 1950s, when more than a third of workers were members of a union. American workers have overwhelmingly rejected unions, so the only way for the labor movement to fight back is to change the rules.

Under current law, if a union gets the signatures of at least 30 percent of employees, it can obtain a secret ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. But the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act currently in the House would allow the NLRB to certify a union if a simple majority of workers publicly sign "card checks." Employees would not be able to cast their votes privately, leaving the process vulnerable to union intimidation tactics. And these tactics need not be as overt as those of Jimmy Hoffa.

Unions can resort to other forms of harassment to influence workers who may not be interested in joining, which is clear from examples in which businesses have allowed unions to organize using the "card check" process. Mike Ivey, who works for the Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation in Gaffney, South Carolina, has sought legal representation from the National Right to Work Foundation after four years of harassment from United Auto Workers, which has tried to organize the facility. Though 70 percent of employees indicated they had no interest in joining the union, Ivey stated that the UAW turned his workplace into a hostile work environment in its drive to get a majority of employees to fall into line. Friendships fell apart and opponents of unionization were constantly badgered at work, called at home, and even visited multiple times at their homes by union organizers.

As someone who once had the misfortune of being a member of a union as part of my contract with a former employer, I can personally testify to the power of good old-fashioned peer pressure. When my union was in contract negotiations, it asked its members to participate in a silly ritual in which everybody wore red union shirts at the office to show their solidarity. Given my political tendencies, I refused to participate in such a nonsensical exercise. As a result, co-workers would repeatedly stop by my desk in an effort to cajole me into putting on the shirt, while others would simply roll their eyes or look at me in disgust as they passed me. While I never submitted to their demands, virtually everyone else in the office did, including many who privately expressed to me their opposition to the union and recognized the absurdity of such a childish display. I could only imagine how much more intense the peer pressure would have been had the issue been about establishing a union.

If unions believe that workers would benefit from their representation, they have no reason to fear submitting themselves to the democratic process in a secret ballot election, but instead they prefer coercion.

Union leaders serve themselves, their union bosses, and the Democrat Party, in that order. The workers come dead last, if at all. I can say this with confidence, being the son of a 42-year union man and having spent some hours in the union hall watching the gold-watch, bespoke suit-wearing leadership call power players and gladhand much of the day.