Secret balloting has solved another potential problem: vote buying, which they essentially ended in U.S. elections. After all, why pay people if you couldn’t be sure how they voted? But if Barack Obama becomes president, secret ballots seem destined to end for at least one type of election: union certifications.

Currently, when 50 percent of workers in a company sign statements to unionize, that merely sets up a second stage, where workers vote by secret ballot to determine if the company would be unionized. Under the new proposal, using a system called “Card Check,” unionization would occur as soon as half the workers had signed cards stating that they favor union representation.

In other words, up until now, a worker could placate union supporters and sign a statement saying that he wanted a union and then vote against the union when he was protected by the secrecy of the voting booth.

While the Bush administration promised to veto the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act,” Obama has made his feelings about the legislation very clear. Last year, Obama promised, “We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s not a matter of ‘if’; it’s a matter of’ ‘when.’ We may have to wait for the next president to sign it, but we will get this thing done.”

Many are predicting Democrats will increase their current majorities, but even if they keep them as they are now, there is already substantial support in Congress. In votes last year, almost exclusively along party lines, Democrats in the House easily passed the bill by 241 to 185. The Senate support was closer, with 51 senators supporting it and 48 opposing, but Democrats are predicting that they will gain enough seats to withstand a filibuster.

Why have unions placed this at the top of their legislative agenda? Changing the rules would only make a difference if workers were unwilling to vote in private for unionization, but apparently there are a lot of companies where unions think that this change will make a difference. After all, the AFL-CIO calls the “Employee Free Choice Act” its million member mobilization.

Unions are making an all-out push to get this passed, planning to spend $360 million on the 2008 election, $200 million more than in 2004 general election. Just one union alone, the Service Employees International Union, plans on spending $75 million this year, much of it to help the Democratic presidential nominee. Compare that to the $83 million that John McCain will be able to spend during the fall general election.

That’s not all. The Service Employees International Union is already committed to making 10 million telephone calls early next year to congressmen to ensure this bill gets enacted.

Unions are understandably desperate to increase membership, as membership has been declining for decades, the share of private-sector workers who are union members falling from around 35 percent in the 1950s to 8.2 percent in 2007. Publicsector union membership has declined, but much more slowly, still representing 36 percent of government workers in 2007. The decline has continued under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

Obama has promised in many ways to help unions and protect their workers from competition. He wants to renegotiate the NAFTA agreement signed under President Clinton. He opposes free trade agreements with such strong American allies as Colombia. He has long been opposed to educational vouchers, something teachers’ unions also strongly oppose. But despite all his troubles with working-class voters, it is hard to think of much else that Obama could promise unions.

Obama claims that strengthening unions is good because unions will “lift up the middle-class in this country once more.” But protecting teachers unions from competition comes at the expense of students. Protecting workers from trade competition comes at the expense of customers and even other workers (e.g., if you protect steel workers from competition, the prices of American-made cars rise relative to foreign-made ones).

Unionization virtually always raises some workers’ salaries at the expense of other workers. If unions insist on increasing worker pay by threatening strikes that shut down companies, firms reduce the number of workers they hire. Some workers gain higher wages, but only at the expense of causing other workers to lose their jobs. Possibly this last point explains why unions want to scrape secret ballots.

It is hard to believe that Obama and Democrats really think that eliminating secret ballots is a good idea. Surely, they are not going to start proposing we start getting rid of secret ballots all together and let voters simply sign cards? But their desire to impose unionization, whether workers really want it, is overriding their common sense. Their proposal will make the country and most workers poorer.

John Lott is the author of Freedomnomics and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.

The Right to Vote in Privacy.

A fundamental principle of American democracy is that votes are private choices. Secret ballot elections ensure that voters can choose the candidate who truly represents them, not the candidate whom their friends or neighbors want them to support. Millions of Americans cherish this freedom, but many Members of Congress want to take it from American workers.

For more than 60 years, American workers have decided whether to form a union with a private vote. When enough workers at a company sign union authorization cards, the government supervises a secret ballot election. Workers vote “yes” or “no” on union membership. If a majority of workers vote “yes,” a union is formed, but neither management nor union organizers know how each individual worker voted. The secret ballot lets workers vote their conscience without risking job loss or physical assault for making the “wrong” choice.

Employee “Free Choice” Act Strips Workers’ Rights.

The EFCA would make it easier for union officials to pressure workers. Under the card-check process, union organizers would publicly solicit signatures on union authorization cards. After a majority of workers at a company sign the cards, the union becomes the bargaining representative of all the workers at the company.

Without secret ballots, union organizers know exactly who has signed union cards and who has not. In the past, union organizers have repeatedly approached and pressured-and, in some cases, threatened-reluctant workers.1 They have also used pro-union co-workers to solicit signatures, putting peer pressure on “holdouts” to change their minds.

The card-check process also denies workers the right to vote “yes” or “no” on joining a union. Workers can only vote “yes” by signing the card. Not signing a card simply means “not yet.” Organizers are free to return again and again until they get the result they want. That is not voting, which by definition is a choice between two or more options.

Even the limited freedom of saying “not yet” would be denied to some workers. Under card check, all workers in a company must join the union after organizers collect cards signed by a majority, even if some of those workers did not know about the organizing drive and were never asked to sign a card. A worker has a right to express his or her views with a ballot, even if that vote does not change the results of the election. Card check takes that right away.

Disenfranchising 105 Million Workers.

The EFCA applies only to workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which does not cover government employees, agricultural workers, the self-employed, or railway or airline workers. The Act also excludes supervisors. Still, the EFCA would disenfranchise 105 million American workers, which encompasses more than twothirds, or 68.8 percent, of the American workforce.

Chart 1 shows, by state, how many workers would lose their right to a private vote on union membership.

Politicians Against Voting.

Every major Democratic presidential candidate wants to end secret ballots for union organizing elections. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Senator Barrack Obama (D-IL) voted for the bill, while former Senator John Edwards co-sponsored the EFCA during his time in the Senate.

Under the EFCA, millions of workers in key primary states would lose the right to a private vote on joining a union. The act would disenfranchise:
- 508,497 workers in New Hampshire;
- 1,540,440 workers in South Carolina;
- 3,606,930 workers in Michigan; and
- 6,652,444 workers in Florida.

Even as they campaign to win a secret ballot election, many presidential candidates would take the right to vote away from American workers.

Conclusion.

Few Americans are aware that many leading presidential candidates want to take away their right to vote privately on joining a union. The little-known and misnamed Employee Free Choice Act would disenfranchise 105 million American workers by replacing secret ballots for union organizing elections with the card check system. This process would expose workers to union pressure and intimidation, while denying them the option of voting “no” on union representation. The President and Members of Congress are elected by secret ballots. Congress should reject any effort to deny workers the right to vote.

-James Sherk is Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

“Stronach has a high opinion of himself, but there’s no reason to think he isn’t a seriously smart guy,”’ said Dan Luria, an analyst at the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center in Plymouth, Michigan, who called the timing of the talks more than coincidence. “Besides wanting Chrysler, he wants to be able to say he remade labor relations in North America.”

Stronach, who built Magna into Canada’s largest auto-parts maker, said in its annual report on March 28 that the current labor-relations system is the North American auto industry’s biggest handicap. He called for a new “framework of fairness” that would include profit sharing instead of rigid wage formulas.

UAW spokesman Roger Kerson and Magna spokeswoman Tracy Fuerst declined to comment.

The CAW, based in Toronto, now represents 1,000 workers at three Magna factories in Canada, where the company has 18,000 employees at 45 plants. In the U.S., the Detroit-based UAW has organized eight Magna factories with 4,000 hourly and salaried workers. Magna has 18,000 employees at 54 plants in the U.S.

Chrysler Bid
Workers at each Magna factory would have to vote to accept the expanded relationship, Hargrove said. The 63-year-old union leader said he didn’t know when the talks would be finished, in part because Stronach and other Magna executives have been preoccupied since February with the Chrysler bid.

Jerry Dias, a representative of the Canadian union, said last week after a meeting with DaimlerChrysler’s labor committee that the CAW, the UAW and the IG Metall union in Germany prefer that the company keep Chrysler. “If they choose to spin it off, we can live with Magna,” Dias said.

Other Bidders
Other Chrysler bidders include buyout firms Cerberus Capital Management LP and a Blackstone Group LP-Centerbridge Capital Partners LLC partnership, people familiar with the offers have said. Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corp. announced its $4.5 billion offer for Chrysler on April 5.

Dieter Zetsche, chief executive officer of Stuttgart, Germany-based DaimlerChrysler, said on Feb. 14 that “all options are open” for Chrysler. The U.S. unit, based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, posted a $680 million loss for last year as high gasoline prices damped demand for the pickup trucks, sport- utility vehicles and minivans that account for about three- fourths of its sales.

If all of Magna’s workers vote to join the CAW, the percentage of Canadian auto-parts workers belonging to unions would rise to 75 percent, a level not seen since the 1970s, from 45 percent now, said Hemi Mitic, an aide to Hargrove.

The UAW represents less than 30 percent of U.S. auto-parts workers, Luria said.

‘Fairness Committee’
The CAW’s current contracts at three Magna factories include a traditional grievance procedure, Mitic said. They also allow for some of Stronach’s innovations, including an anonymous hot line and a ``fairness committee’’ of workers chosen by management to review complaints.

CAW members at a Magna seat plant in Windsor, Ontario, are paid about C$27 ($24.30) an hour including profit sharing, Mitic said. Magna’s policy is to have a pay scale close to industry averages for specific parts, with workers making sophisticated components such as seats receiving the highest pay, he said.

The CAW’s role is to act as a “check and balance” to make sure managers in Magna’s decentralized units don’t let wages slip below industry averages, Mitic said. The need for that role has grown along with Magna’s size, he said.
Magna, which Stronach started in a rented Toronto garage in 1957, earned $528 million on $24.2 billion in sales last year. The company’s sales have more than doubled since 2001.

Magna shares were unchanged at C$87.85 at 4:15 p.m. in Toronto Stock Exchange trading. They have declined 6.4 percent this year.

In 1999, the CAW threatened to strike at DaimlerChrysler unless the automaker pressured Magna to be less hostile to union organizers. After that threat, DaimlerChrysler asked Magna to let workers decide on joining the union without fear of intimidation.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Lippert in Southfield, Michigan, at .

“Remember the ‘90s, when four of the Top 10 companies to work for had operations right here?” asked Randy Boileau, executive director of West Michigan Works. “We want to keep jobs here and create others because we know this is a good place to work, a good place to live and a good place to raise a family.”

State Sen. Wayne Kuipers acknowledged Michigan has had its share of economic difficulties over the past two years, but said he believes a dedicated, well-trained work force is helping West Michigan companies lead the way to recovery.

There were large trucks representing American Bottling Co., Boar’s Head Provisions, Haworth Inc., Herman Miller Inc., Gentex Corp., Harbor Steel, Royal Plastics, Tiera Yachts, ODL, Transmatic Group, Trendway Corp., ITW Drawform, West Michigan Office Interiors and many others.

Even so, it was the oldest truck that captured the curiosity of most spectators. It was a 1941 pickup with a wooden box that had been used by Hudsonville Ice Cream to pick up milk cans from dairy farmers.

Many company representatives stood in front of their rigs and passed out souvenirs ranging from water bottles and Frisbees to key chains and candy.
But the highlight of the parade for Hollanders Michael and Tina Kanis’ three sons was, of course, the trucks themselves.

Grayson, 6, 4-year-old Christian and 1-year-old Noah got to ride in the parade in the cab of an ACTL semitrailer with all the bells and whistles. Ross Lurtsema, who owns the Zeeland trucking company, is a friend of the boys’ parents.

“Until you see trucks from all these local companies lined up, you don’t realize how much business and industry is happening here,” Michael Kanis said. “There’s a lot. It makes me feel proud.”

Copyright Grand Rapids Press Sep 6, 2005