Corporations, legislators try to sell the Big Lie
By Hoyt N. Wheeler, West Columbia
As every purveyor of propaganda knows, there is no more effective way to fight rational ideas than the Big Lie. This is exactly what is being done by corporate spokesmen and their tame legislators with respect to the Employee Free Choice Act.
We see the effects of this in the attempt in the S.C. Legislature to enact a state constitutional amendment that would establish a right to vote in union representation processes in spite of the fact that this is a matter dealt with by the National Labor Relations Board under federal law.
The Employee Free Choice Act would require an employer to recognize a union as the representative of its employees upon the union showing that a majority of the employees had signed cards authorizing the union to represent them. Under current law, the employer may recognize the union but may also demand that there be a secret ballot election.
The Big Lie being broadcast is that this act would take away from workers something that they already have — the right to vote. Like all good lies, it contains a partial truth. It is true that an election is less likely under the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). However, the employees do not lose the right to vote. You can’t lose what you don’t have. Employees currently have no individual right to vote. It is employers who would lose the right to insist on an election.
The only case in which employees have rights in this regard that would be changed by the Employee Free Choice Act is this: Under a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board under Bush last year, if an employer accepts cards and recognizes a union on that basis, 30 percent of the employees can demand an election. Under the EFCA, they would still have the individual right to refuse to sign an authorization card.
So it is a right of the corporation, not rights of employees, that is at stake here. This, of course, explains the cranking up of a big-time propaganda machine financed by corporations. Is it their deep concern for employees’ rights that has prompted this? Quite the contrary, it is their own power that is at stake. It is this that has led them to savagely attack this legislation.
For someone who doesn’t know how the union organization process works in practice, an election sounds perfectly reasonable. In the abstract, this makes sense. However, what we have experienced in recent years is a vigorous and successful attack on unions by employers, reducing them to 7.4 percent of the private sector work force.
Part of the reason for this is the inherent unfairness of the union representation process. It bears no resemblance to a political election. In representation elections, one party, the employer, has the power of economic life and death over em-ployees. It also has complete access to the workers, while the union has to struggle just to find out who they are, let alone meet with them.
Employers, employing highly skillful union avoidance consultants and lawyers, may bombard workers with anti-union information, movies and captive audience speeches on company time. Supervisors may meet one-on-one with employees, interrogating and pressuring them. Union organizers, on the other hand, have extraordinary difficulty locating and communicating with workers.
It is argued that it is always to the workers’ advantage to have an election. But do workers really want to be subjected to propaganda and pressure from their employer? This is what actually happens in a unionization campaign.
It is also argued that, under the Employee Free Choice Act, unions would coerce workers to sign cards. But currently unions need to get workers to sign cards in order to have an election. It is against the law to coerce workers in this process. Yet it is employers, not unions, who are charged by the National Labor Relations Board with almost all (88 percent in 2006 and 2007) of the violations of the National Labor Relations Act. Coercing employees to sign cards would remain an unfair labor practice under the Employee Free Choice Act and could cost a union its right to represent the employees.
Underlying this controversy is the fundamental question of whether unions should be given an opportunity to rise from the ashes and once again be a powerful force fighting for the interests of working people. One of the problems in our economy is a lack of purchasing power and security of workers. In addition to ensuring just treatment, unions raise wages and, more importantly, make it much more likely that workers have the security of health insurance and a guaranteed, defined benefit pension.
It was exactly to place more resources in the hands of workers through encouraging the ‘practice and procedure of collective bargaining’ that led to the Wagner Act during the Great Depression. This policy worked. It makes sense today.
Hoyt N. Wheeler, a retired college professor, has written several books on labor issues. He resides in West Columbia.