Politics is rife with words meant to sound very different from their true meaning.

The Employee Free Choice Act is being used to deny workers a secret ballot when voting to petition for a union. A secret ballot is sacrosanct in our democracy and is critical in protecting voters from intimidating actions.

My personal experience is that unions will lie and intimidate freely to get a petition signed and to get workers to vote a union in. I am sure that there have been cases where employers will also stretch ethical behavior to get their workers to vote against a union. In fact the secret ballot was originally demanded by unions to avoid employer intimidation. No matter how many laws and court rulings are used to get workers treated fairly, nothing protects their rights and intentions as much as a secret ballot.

Actions to deny workers a secret ballot are a shameless power grab by the unions as a payoff for their support of the current Congress and administration. Acquiescence to this gives P.J. O’Rourke’s description of a “parliament of whores” a ring of “truthiness”. The comparison is unfair to whores.

Yet the secret ballot is only part of this calamity. If a contract is not neogotiated in 60 days the union can have the federal government set the terms and force them on the company. What company in their right mind would open a new factory or create a new job in such an onerous environment? This is a job killer on a massive scale.

Union membership has declined precipitously in the last half century. Union demands have helped to cripple and bankrupt many icons of capitalism; GM is just the latest victim. (Yes there were other causes; every contract did require two signatures.)

Modern progressive management practices have also contributed to the decline in union membership. The largest and most profitable steel company in America is Nucor. It is non union; having defeated unionization attempts many times. It workers are well compensated and quite content. The union handicapped steel companies of 50 years ago are mere shadows of their prior existence.

Many manufacturers fled south to escape union pressures in the north. An American government that pushes unionization on its workforce will contribute significantly to the same flight overseas. Unemployment will rise and capital forming industries will vacate along with its society improving, wealth creating, tax paying benefits.

While I strive to see both sides of an argument I can not see how anyone remotely concerned with a worker’s rights can support denying him the right to a secret ballot. The damage to employment and business creation by this Orwellian promise of worker fairness would set back business growth by decades. Once a business locates overseas, it will not be quick to move back.

Like the unions themselves, candidates will freely and loosely make promises they either forget or refuse to keep. This is one promise they should break.

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