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Union Facts

Memo to John Sweeney: Get a Better Pollster

Union bosses have been cooking the books. As they attempt to end secret ballot elections for employees deciding whether to join a union, labor chiefs claim to have a groundswell of support. The real numbers tell a different story.

The AFL-CIO commissioned a study – which they won’t release – claiming that 60 million Americans want a union. But prestigious polls, including questions originally crafted on behalf of the AFL-CIO and recently commissioned by the Center for Union Facts – suggest most Americans don’t want to join a union and they don’t want union bosses stealing their right to a personal, private vote. Consider:

  • Fully 74% of non-union workers say they would not “personally like to be a member of a labor union.”
    — Zogby International poll, August 2006
  • 64% of workers say they would prefer their present job to be non-union.
    — Opinion Research Corporation Poll, March 2007
     
  • 78% of Americans prefer secret ballots for union organizing.
    — Opinion Research Corporation Poll, March 2007
     
  • 87% agree that “every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union.”
    — McLaughlin and Associates, January 2007