It’s really touching to see employers so worried about workers having the right to vote in secret ballot representation elections. The same folks who have been telling workers to “take it or leave it” for years are portraying the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which promotes card check certifi•cation, as anti-democratic and practically un-American.

The difference, of course, is that with a new administration and Congress, EFCA has a good chance of passing this year. President Obama has supported the legislation in the past and has pledged to make it a pri•ority of his administration. But, opposition from the right-wing, anti-worker crowd is going to be fierce. 

As the battle heats up, you’ll hear a lot of rhetoric on talk radio and in the other conservative media about the sanctity of secret ballot elections and “the American way.” Just ask yourself one question: Why is the Chamber of Commerce chorus suddenly singing about workers’ rights?

The real issue is how we can restore the freedom of working people to make their own decision about joining together to bargain for better wages and working conditions. Until working people can exercise a free choice, they will continue to lose power in our country, living standards will continue to suffer and our middle class will continue to decline. Workers need a real choice. They don’t have it now.

I’m reminded of the great civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph who understood that civil rights without economic rights were somewhat meaningless. What good is the right to attend any school if you can’t afford the tuition?

The fact is our legal system no longer protects workers’ right to join a union. By the time employees get to vote, the environment has been so poisoned that free and fair choice isn’t an option. Corporations control the information workers can receive and rou•tinely sabotage the process by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing people who try to organize unions. No employee has free choice after being browbeaten by a supervisor to oppose the union or being told they might lose their job and livelihood if workers vote for the union. 

Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner stud•ied hundreds of organizing campaigns and found that:

• Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.

• Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.

• Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees form a union.

• In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.

• Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract. 

Majority sign-up is a democratic process. Workers can essentially vote to have a union by signing an authorization card. If they don’t sign a card, they are presumed to be against the union and it would be illegal to coerce anyone to sign a card. The Employee Free Choice Act will also prevent employers from indefinitely dragging out negotiations by imposing mandatory arbitration at some point.  Sounds fair to me and a lot better than the stacked-deck system we have now.