Press Rlease:

New Study on Why Labor Unions Are Opposed to Secret Ballot Elections (When They’re Inconvenient)

Washington, D.C., March 24, 2009—A new study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute reveals the enthusiasm with which labor unions have supported secret ballot elections in the past, while campaigning to do away with them in union organizing today.

“Card Check Double Standard: Unions’ Hypocrisy on the Secret Ballot,” by F. Vincent Vernuccio, evaluates the provisions of the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), particularly the proposal to do away with secret ballots when it comes to organizing at a non-union workplace. As past complaints have demonstrated, depriving employees of the right to vote in private during a union organizing drive leaves them open to intimidation and harassment by union officials.

Ironically, however, many of the nation’s top unions have secret ballot provisions in their constitutions and bylaws governing internal elections, and have insisted on secret ballot elections when their own employees have tried to organize.

“EFCA sponsor Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and other supporters of the bill in Congress have even urged foreign government officials to use the secret ballot in union certification elections,” writes Vernuccio. “Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis fought for the use of the secret ballot in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as well as sponsoring legislation in California protecting the secret ballot for workers voting on their employers’ overtime policies.”

For a comprehensive overview of the Employee Free Choice Act and its potential impact on American workers, see the new study by Russ Brown of the Labor Relations Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute Editorial Director Ivan Osorio, “The Employee Free Choice Act Is Anything But: A Comparison of Labor Organizing Today vs. under EFCA.”

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.

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