The Union Campaign Against Secret Ballot Elections
Facing declining membership, union officials have turned to a highly
questionable practice of organizing new members through a process
called "card check." With card checks, paid union organizers try to
persuade workers to sign cards saying that they favor union representation.
This persuasion is documented as frequently including deception,
coercion, and harassing visits to workers' homes.
Under current law, as soon as more than 50 percent of the workers in an
appropriate bargaining (work) unit sign a union authorization card, the
employer can choose to recognize the union as the representative of 100
percent of the workers if the employer believes it reflects actual sentiment
of the employees (even though not a single employee has actually
been able to cast a personal, private vote). In those relatively rare instances
in which an employer has agreed to card check, the employer has
often been under pressure, which includes threats of a negative public
relations campaign intended solely to injure a company's reputation until
it capitulates to this recognition demand. Most often, when presented
with these cards, employers have exercised their right to call for a representation
election of employees using private ballots because (as even
the AFL-CIO has acknowledged) cards are not a reliable signal of an
individual's true interest in joining a union. (Often, individuals will sign
cards under intentional or unintentional misunderstandings or to get the
organizer to stop harassing them, even though the employee may have
no desire to join a union.)
As an August 2006 Hartford Courant editorial explained, "[n]ot surprisingly,
the card-check procedure almost always results in a union victory
because the union controls the entire process." But the real cost is paid
by working Americans: the card check process steals workers' rights to a
personal, anonymous vote on whether or not they want to pay dues to a
union, and all that unionization entails.
Download full card check report (3.5 MB .pdf)
Read more at LaborPains.org