Rep. John Boehner has a good piece over at U.S. News and World Report about the problems with the Employee Free Choice Act (which would rob American workers the right to a secret ballot election regarding unionization). I particularly enjoyed this section:
Some of the legislation’s most ardent supporters have spoken passionately in favor of secret-ballot elections-but only when it serves their interests. Take, for example, a 2001 letter sent to Mexican officials by Rep. George Miller of California, sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act. Before a union election in Mexico, Miller and other congressional Democrats wrote, “We understand that the secret ballot is allowed for, but not required, by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose.”
Or consider a 2001 NLRB brief filed by the AFL-CIO. In it, the labor organization defended the use of a secret ballot in union decertification elections-in which employees choose whether to opt out of a union-stating that a secret ballot “provides the surest means of avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressures and not individual decisions.”
Or how about the words of Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, when she refused to identify whom she would support in an internal Democratic contest last year to determine the chairmanship of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee? She noted, “It’s a secret ballot, thank the Lord.”
Such doublespeak underscores what is really at play here. This legislation is not about workers’ rights. It’s about meeting the demands of special-interest allies who helped Democrats take control of Washington. As middle-class Americans face growing challenges at work and at home, we need both parties working together on their behalf-not one party working to complicate their lives even further by ending the fundamental right to privacy in the workplace.
More here.