Comment & Debate
James Sherk and Paul Kersey. “How the Employee Free Choice Act Takes Away Workers’ Rights”. Heritage Foundation. 23 Apr. 2007 – Card Check Would Not Counter Alleged Abuses. Unions also object to the fact that employers can campaign against organizing and present workers with arguments against joining a union at the workplace. AFL-CIO president John Sweeney complains that employers require “supervisors to shovel anti-union propaganda to the employees whose schedules, evaluations and advancement they control” and force “workers to attend one-sided, anti-union meetings where management can legally fire pro-union workers who speak out.”[46] Unions say that card checks would remedy this problem.
If employers’ campaigns against unionizing were a serious problem, card-check laws that force workers to reveal their preferences in public would not solve it. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees employers the right to present their views to their workers. So long as they avoid threats, employers would still be able to hold “captive audience” meetings and “shovel anti-union propaganda” to their workers just as effectively when ballots are public as they could when they are private.
However, employer campaigns against unionizing benefit workers by informing them of the downsides of joining a union. Supervisors, for example, often hold group meetings where they inform workers of the potential costs of union membership. This may be the only time that workers hear why they might not want to join. Union organizers will not tell workers these things. Unions train organizers to avoid topics like dues increases and strike histories that could persuade workers to reject the union.[47] Employers should provide their workers with the other side of the story. That is how democracy works: Voters make an informed decision in private after both sides make their strongest case.