By Andy Zipser,
Editor,
The Guild Reporter
Communication Workers of America

As the CWA, like the rest of organized labor, makes a major push on behalf of the Employee Free Choice Act, big business is beginning to push back-and, ironically, is doing so under the banner of workplace democracy.

The Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA, has three fundamental elements that labor leaders say are essential for safeguarding workers' rights to unionize. One would require binding arbitration of a first contract if an employer and a new union can't reach agreement within a set period. A second would increase fines against employers who illegally intimidate or fire employees who are trying to organize a union.

But the provision attracting the most anti-EFCA propaganda is one that would give workers the right to union representation based solely on a majority signing authorization cards. Workers already have that right now-if an employer agrees. But a company also can disregard the authorization cards, compelling a union to seek a representation election under the supervision of the National Labor Relations Board.

Put another way, under current law it's up to an employer to decide how workers will decide whether they're going to have a union. Under EFCA, the decision of whether to hold an election or to go with a show of hands via card-check would be up to the workers themselves. That might sound like a more democratic approach, but the thought that their employees might skip NLRB elections has business interests in a tizzy.

"The obvious intention and design of the bill is to eliminate private ballots as the primary means of certifying unions in this country," declared Steven Law, chief legal officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "This is un-American," echoed Chamber president Tom Donohue, in announcing that defeating EFCA has become the business group's top legislative priority.

For business interests suddenly to express concern for the democratic rights of the working class is much like that old saw about a talking pig: the wonder is not what it says, but that it can say anything at all. At a time when workers increasingly are treated as liabilities rather than assets, for employers to publicly fret about workers' rights and American values is . . . touching. Or let's be more honest and call it for what it is: cynically manipulative.

The fact is that the current system, little changed for more than 50 years, has been gamed so well by business interests that the percentage of unionized employees has trended steadily downward for almost all that time. Employers like NLRB-supervised elections because they give them multiple opportunities to derail an organizing drive, from confronting employees one-on-one to threatening to shut down or relocate a business if workers unionize to filing court appeals if an election nevertheless goes against them.

As a result, less than 8% of the private-sector workforce now belongs to a union, while the number of lost NLRB elections climbs in tandem with the rise of a "union-avoidance" consultant industry.

There is nothing inherently sacrosanct about ballots or elections, as residents of Iron Curtain countries could attest during the Cold War, and as many Americans felt in 2000 and 2004. Any system can be manipulated. The key question is not what method is used to ascertain what workers want, but how to safeguard their right to choose. What employers clearly want, on the other hand, is to safeguard a system that they know how to work to their advantage-and if that means pushing various rhetorical hot-buttons, that's just how the game is played.

Some measure of just how threatened business feels by the possible loss of a system it has mastered can be seen in a recent Wall Street Journal story about politically-oriented meetings that Wal-Mart required its store managers and department heads to attend. The fiercely anti-union employer made it "clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in" because of Obama's professed support of the EFCA, the Journal reported.

Blatant electioneering aside, Wal-Mart's position clearly defies U.S. labor policy as spelled out in the National Labor Relations Act and makes clear that when it comes to EFCA, corporate protestations about worker democracy are merely a fig leaf for an anti-union agenda. Nor is Wal-Mart alone, although it may be the least circumspect.

Something called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, claiming several hundred industry associations as members, is running anti-EFCA television ads in the Midwest and fielding lobbyists in Washington, D.C. The so-called Employee Freedom Action Committee, run by the same Rick Berman who in recent years placed misleading full-page newspaper ads excoriating labor unions for their undemocratic ways, also is stepping up to the plate. All told, the business lobby has acknowledged amassing a war chest of $50 million to date to fight just this one issue.

EFCA, meanwhile, passed easily in the House last year but has foundered in the Senate, where it has majority support but not enough to clear a 60-vote filibuster hurdle. So one goal of its union supporters is to elect more pro-labor Senators; another is to elect Obama as president, not only because he has vowed to sign the legislation if it reaches him but because Republican John McCain has promised to veto it.