Revised and updated June 20, 2007

Organized labor has made the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) its top legislative priority. The act would replace the current system of secret-ballot organizing elections with card checks, in which workers publicly sign union cards to organize and join a union. It would also impose binding arbitra­tion for the initial bargaining agreement after orga­nization and increase the penalties for unfair labor practices committed by employers--but not unions--during organizing drives. Each of these provisions would harm American workers.

Stifling Free Choice

Under the EFCA, once organizers collect signed cards from a majority of a company's employees, all of the company's workers would be forced to join the union without a vote. This strips workers of both their fundamental right to vote and their pri­vacy. Both the union and the employer would know exactly which workers want to join the union, leaving workers vulnerable to threats and intimidation.

Even when organizers obey the law, card check allows union organizers to push workers to com­mit to joining a union immediately after hearing their one-sided sales pitch without either a chance to hear the arguments from the other side or time for reflection. When workers decline to sign the union card on the spot, union organizers return again and again to pressure these holdouts to change their minds. Privately, unions acknowl­edge that union cards signed under these circum­stances do not accurately reflect workers' desire to join a union.

Contrary to union rhetoric, organizing elections are fair and do protect the rights of workers. Unions win over 60 percent of these elections. Government data show that employers illegally fire union supporters in just 2.7 percent of election campaigns, and most alleged violations are investi­gated and processed in a few months. Today's elec­tion procedures balance the rights of employers and unions and ensure that unions have access to workers when they are not on company time.

Workers themselves disagree with the union activists who claim to speak for them. A large majority of union members agree that secret-bal­lot elections are fair and should not be replaced with card check. Most other Americans also agree. Congress should not change a system that most workers support.

Reducing Accountability

The EFCA's second component would force employers and newly organized unions into bind­ing arbitration if they were unable to settle on a col­lective bargaining agreement within 90 days from the start of bargaining. This provision would force private firms into a risky process that works poorly in the public sector. In states like Michigan that use binding arbitration, it takes an average of 15 months for arbitrators to make a ruling.

Binding arbitration places control of wages and employment conditions in the hands of unac­countable government officials. Arbitrators have little knowledge of the competitive realities that firms face and no expertise in crafting the business contracts on which workers and employers rely. An arbitrator's ruling would be final, and the arbi­trator would not have to live with the conse­quences of the ruling. Workers could not appeal a decision that gave them too little pay or one that would bankrupt the firm. Government-imposed contracts would also stifle corporate competitive­ness and innovation.

Ignoring Union Abuses

The EFCA's final section would increase penal­ties on employers, but not unions, that engage in unfair labor practices during organizing drives. Labor activists argue that unions almost never abuse workers during organizing drives, so there is no need to increase penalties for union abuses. But they misrepresent the facts to reach this conclusion. In fact, unions have been charged with making threats, violence, coercion, and intimidation thou­sands of times since 2000.

Increasing penalties on employers alone would send the message that union coercion is a lesser injustice to workers. Congress should treat the unfair labor practices of unions exactly the same as it treats those of employers.

James Sherk is the Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, and Paul Kersey is Senior Labor Policy Analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan.