Secret ballots allow workers who don’t want to join the union to vote against it without fear of being beaten to death, having their houses burned down, or having their wives and children murdered in their beds by the union goons. Card-check is simply a way of giving thugs access to a handy list of noncompliant workers.

Of course, if unions lacked coercive monopoly powers, the benefit of getting one installed wouldn’t be so great that backers would feel it was worth killing innocent people in order to make it happen.

BTW, Warren, finally fixed your link on my blog. sorry about that.

Come see us.

I guess my first comment was typed rather hastily and didn’t make much sense. I do know how unions work, having represented management as a labor lawyer for over 20 years. The experiences you cited in your comments are quite real and quite familiar to me.

The primary reason I commented in the first place was that the main article’s title and text seemed to be suggesting that there could be something philosophically “libertarian” about the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. My point, which I apparently didn’t get across very well, was that I just don’t see any room for that possibility. Accepting the wikipedia definition of libertarianism (that every person is the absolute owner of their own life and should be free to do whatever they wish with their person or property, as long as they allow others the same liberty), the “majority rules” determination of union representation – whether it be by card check or by secret ballot – seems antithetical to that philosophy. I was just surprised to see someone even ponder whether U.S. labor policy might be “libertarian.”

You guys seem to take issue with my quibble with the main article’s use of the word “tax.” First, let me give you a little background as to why I quibbled. I operate a blog entitled “EFCA Updates,” http://www.efcaupdates.com, which is designed to keep the law firm’s business clients informed about this dangerous bill. In monitoring the public debate, I’ve become sensitive to rhetoric on both sides. In my opinion, the reasons for concluding that the bill would be very bad labor policy are so great that I do not wish to see those reasons discounted when they are couched in inflammatory language. Referring to union dues and fees with the emotionally-loaded term “tax” troubled me because it is not technically inaccurate. Admittedly, however, the practical effect probably does feel like a tax.

Markum, though in some states employees can be required to pay dues (or what is known as Beck objector fees), no employee can legally be required to remit those dues or fees through payroll deduction. They still have to pay the union, they just don’t have to treat it like a “tax” for payroll purposes. If someone has dues coming out of their paycheck, it is because they signed a document authorizing it. Most people don’t realize that, of course, because of the “informal powers” that the main article so accurately described as being possessed by unions.

Similarly, Markum, employees who do not join the union cannot be required to pay initiation fees, fines, or assessments. The only thing that can lawfully be mandated in a workplace with a union security provision are the Beck objector fees (dues minus political expenditures).

So, I hope the two of you will forgive the minor quibbles I so poorly articulated the first time around. I also wish that you would share your experiences with others as the Senate takes up this proposed legislation. The AFL-CIO has a well-oiled PR machine working right now. Among the talking points they are using are: (a) workers always earn more under a union contract; and (b) union activists almost never intimidate people. It sounds like the two of you can refute those points quite effectively.

On top of that, where is the process for verification that the employee actually signed the card?

Sorry. I’ve been on both sides here (although unwillingly a union member). I’ve had a lot of dollars extracted from me by a union, with little to show for it.

There is a reason that the only area of growth enjoyed by unions in recent years in in the government sector. Only the government can give away the store and pass on the costs to the taxpayer without suffering harm (except to the taxpayer).

If that’s true, then I agree that it’s a state intervention and thus bad – but one akin to forbidding employers from agreeing to shoot themselves in the head. I find it hard to believe that any employer would ever voluntarily agree to a union contract unless the union actually had cartel power, i.e. they somehow managed to get all competent employees to join the union. Cartels are very fragile and vulnerable to defections, in this case “scabs”.

The same commenter believes that employers should be required to “negotiate in good faith” with unions if the employees form one. That would obviously require government force of some kind. I’ll admit to being ignorant of labor law; I assume that this is exactly what happens today, but I don’t know that for sure. If anyone is better informed than I am I’d love to learn more.

The law is also tilted towards the union in a secret-ballot union certification election. Management is very restricted in what it can say against the union during a certification campaign. When a union was attempting to organize the factory where I work, we couldn’t point out that union officials got higher pay than the factory management, and that those paychecks were going to come out of the workers’ pay. Nor could we point out that their pay was not going to get any higher, because the company wasn’t making any profit to begin with – although because this company always had tried to keep the workers well informed, they could easily have drawn that conclusion for themselves. (In the end, the union lost resoundingly. I certainly would favor a policy that sped up the certification elections considerably.)

I’ve seen this from both sides. Now I’m an engineer working at a small electronics manufacturing plant – not really management, but for union purposes I might as well be. Back when I was young and foolish and working a lousy job assembling automobile parts, I joined the UAW and attempted to unionize the plant. Getting a majority in the certification election was the easy part – management attitudes quite different from where I work now made it easy. Getting a union contract that raised the pay enough to even make up for the cost of running the local was the hard part. I don’t know if the money simply wasn’t there, or if they were so attached to a high profit margin that they’d rather shut the plant than give an inch, but it soon became obvious that no gains were possible unless we went on strike and managed to effectively close the plant for months. With Michigan’s bilious economy in the 1970′s there were three more people waiting for every job, so the only way to carry out an effective strike was by violence to deter “scabs”, and fortunately, none of us was that crazy. After a strike against another plant of this company devolved into a gun battle between union picketers trying to stop buses bringing in scabs and company security guards, most of us stopped coming to the union meetings. I joined the Air Force…

The question should always be what good is gained by willingly surrendering my freedon to government.

Anything from the government (or various other left-leaning mass membership organizations) labeled “Free Choice Act” or “Freedom Protection” or “Defense of [insert cause here]” usually contains measures to achieve the opposite effect.

That’s a little cynical/contrarian, but it’s surprisingly (disappointingly?) accurate.

And unions are hopelessly corrupt organizations.

I was working with a crew installing a machine in Indiana several years ago. We actually had a union representative show up on site with a Court order that prevented us from doing any more installation work without the union’s permission. Finally after several days we were allowed to finish our work because the machine was a prototype and the local union workers had no idea how to put it together.

I have been shot at and have had my car firebombed by members of a union. Neither time was I employed as a strike breaker. The first time was when the plant where we were installing the machine that I mentioned earlier went on strike and we continued our work. The second time was when I was working as a temporary contractor on a contract that this company’s union didn’t want and they went on strike. Unions have become nothing more than legalized extortion.

I think your statement about unions being “the only private organizations in this country that . . . that have taxation power, and the power to demand absolutely that certain monies be withheld from employee paychecks (even of employees not in the union)” is not technically accurate either. It is true that in some states unions have the right to negotiate dues or Beck objector fees to the union as a condition of employment, and I suppose that could be a “tax” of sorts if you have no other realistic job options. But the money cannot be deducted from an employee’s paycheck without the employee’s permission. Union fines and assessments do not constitute a “tax” in my opinion because these are only obligations that members agree to when they join (which no one can be required to do). They are more along the lines of the assessments that my neighborhood association can require pursuant to the covanants in the deed that I voluntarily purchased.

I don’t mean to be negative — just correcting some technical points. Your observation about informal powers are dead on, as are many others.

I enjoyed the article.