The importance of the vote was highlighted yesterday at the House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The hearing, entitled “Culture of Union Favoritism: Recent Actions of the National Labor Relations Board,” exposed a variety of shameful decisions made by the NLRB that hurt both workers and employers.
Unionization rates, especially in the private sector, have been declining since the 1950s. Workers simply don’t want to hand over their hard-earned dollars so union bosses can spend them on lavish perks. In the face of this rejection from the workers they claim to represent, these union bosses are focused on depriving workers of their right to vote in union-organizing elections. They know that if workers can’t vote by secret ballot, they can more easily be coerced into joining a union.
Instead of a secret ballot election, Big Labor favors a card check process, whereby workers can be intimidated and coerced into signing a card in public in favor of unionization. This public profession of loyalty to the union is ripe for abuse.
In testimony before the committee, Barbara Ivey, an employee of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, testified why it’s so important that there is an actual vote during a union election: “A vote is truly an election…. I want a choice to say ‘no, I don’t want to be in a union.’…I want an opportunity for everybody to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
In Ms. Ivey’s care, a union was imposed on the workers of Kaiser Permanente Northwest through the card-check process. There was no vote. As she said in her testimony, “I am not in favor of the union, but if the majority of my coworkers truly wanted it, I would have accepted that decision. However, I know that through the card-check scheme used at Kaiser Permanente, everyone in our department did not have a vote.”
Unfortunately, the NLRB’s recent actions undermine workers’ rights in an attempt to bail out Big Labor. This hearing was a good way for Congress to expose the rogue agency and tell the union bosses that while they may control the NLRB, Congress is going to represent workers and business owners.
You can watch an archived webcast of the hearing below.
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