Is EFCA undemocratic?

This is the propaganda that Corporate America and the Republican Party are taking to combat the EFCA -- that it's undemocratic. It's based on a two-prong naive premise that (1) the only way to have democracy is through a secret ballot election and (2) that a secret ballot election is democratic. It is a simple explanation and has the ring of a 8th grade civics lesson to it. However, the first prong is normative, not factual (and patently not true, IMO). Democracy can be had directly through public town-meeting like gatherings, through representative government via means of secret ballot elections, or through collaborative interactive processess (and those are only three possibilities). The second prong is empirical and simply depends on the context. The context for NLRB elections in this country is that management can intervene in union elections (in ways both legal and illegal) with almost no consequences. And more importantly, they actually do this -- and have been doing so as a matter of policy since the 1981 PATCO strike was busted. Workers are harassed and fired for supporting union drives every single day in order to influence voting. And where the union wins an election, the company files objections with the NLRB and stalls. Then, when the election is certified -- and if the workers haven't been scared or disspirited enough to change their minds -- companies refuse to negotiate a first contract (either outright or in good faith).

Research in the past few years has demonstrated that a majority of American workers would join a union if they believed it was safe to do so. Yet, unions lose elections too often, and where they win only about 30% even result in a first contract. What is interesting (but certainly not surprising) is that the same people calling for elections at the workplace now are the ones (or the kinds of ones) who argue that workers should not even be bound by elections (the so-called right to work folks). Labor law orginially was enacted to protect the right to organize, but it is now used to deny workers the right to organize.

The EFCA will level the playing field by allowing workers to join a union without having to go through a process (which is hardly a fair election) in which the company continually threatens and attacks the workers and it will require companies to either come to a first contract in a timely manner or submit the matter to arbitration. And one last thing about card check allowing the union to pressure people into joining union -- the public manner of signing the card opens
workers to pressure by the employer just as much (if not more) than the union. It's a specious argument. But--and this may wait until after Nov 2008--we're going to win this one, and the labor movement is going to finally turn around.