I wrote a letter today to Senator Casey of Pennsylvania urging him to oppose the grossly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” which unions desperately want to pass in order to make unionization much, much easier. I say that the proposed legislation is grossly misnamed because it essentially removes an employee’s free choice in the matter by removing any anonymity from the unionization process.
Currently, when a union wants to get into a company, they need to get at least 30% of the employees to sign cards stating that they’d like union representation. After that, the company can decide to hold a secret ballot election to determine if a majority of employees want union representation. The company doesn’t have to hold the elections. They can just agree to union representation if they want, but that’s a rare (if not nonexistent) happening. Typically, unions try to get 50-60% of the employees to sign cards before moving on to the election in order to bolster their chances for success.
The EFCA effectively removes the secret ballot election, thereby removing any and all employee anonymity in the unionization process. Supporters claim that it does not remove the secret ballot elections and technically, they are correct. They say that it moves the choice of whether to have one from the company to the employees, giving the employees even more say in how the process works. The reality, however, is that they are gone.