Union Thugs Resume Role As Commanders-in-Chief of the Democrat Party

Sometimes I get asked why I refer to the Donkeys as the Democrat Party, rather than their preferred "Democratic" moniker. The answer is simple---truth in advertising:

Observes Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee: Nancy Pelosi "knows union political operatives are largely if not primarily responsible for making her speaker, and union officials want votes on card check." Thus, the House has passed, and the Senate will soon consider, legislation to replace elections with the so-called "card check" process, which would enable labor organizers to intimidate their way to union recognition.

That's not how labor activists put it, of course. But they want to drop today's system, which requires a secret ballot election whenever 30 percent of workers sign a card supporting a union, with automatic recognition if 50 percent-plus-one workers sign a card.

Supporters of the legislation say they want to drop the inconvenient step of representational elections to prevent employer intimidation, though evidence of systemic problems is scant. In fact, a secret ballot makes retaliation against rank-and-file workers well nigh impossible. And the National Labor Relations Board reports few cases -- under two percent -- in which vocal union organizers are fired.

Actually, the fact that secret ballot elections limit the opportunities for abuse is the primary reason why organized labor insists on elections before a union can be decertified. In a 1998 case the AFL-CIO and two individual unions cited the U.S. Supreme Court in asserting "that a representation election 'is a solemn...occasion, conducted under safeguards to voluntary choice.'" Indeed, the unions added, the "representation election system provides the surest means of avoiding decisions which are 'the result of group pressures and not individual decision.'"

Quite true. Thus, elections cannot be spared when workers want out of a union. But organized labor has a different view of "group pressures" deployed as part of an official organizing campaign.

INDEED, UNIONS ASSIDUOUSLY ATTEMPT to undermine "individual decision" through "group pressures." Labor activists regularly intimidate workers into signing cards and supporting unionization. Hence the enthusiasm for "card check" union recognition.

Today's Democrats oppose democracy in Iraq, democracy in Cuba, democracy in America's workplace. And, as Algore's disgusting efforts to disenfranchise American troops serving overseas displayed, they don't limit their disdain for democratic principles to non-political elections either.

They are the Democrat Party---the National Association for the Advancement of Democrats.