Standing Fast

" give labor too much power to spring unions on employers . Employers who don't want to see their workers organize deserve a chance to make that case to employees in advance of the decision."

One might respond that the bosses have the chance everyday to let their employees know how they feel about a union. And unlike the union, the boss can make you listen to his or her opinion on unions whether you want to hear it or not. And as for "springing". The Employee Free Choice Act gives workers the right to form a union if a majority of workers sign up to join one. One would have to be an amazing organizer to pull that off in enough time so the boss would never figure out that there was an organizing drive on until he got the letter in the mail from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Warning against the dangers of giving Employees too much free choice, The Post goes on to argue that the NLRB just needs to beef up its current punishment mechanisms to make sure employers don't abuse pro-union workers. That's great if we could guarantee that we never have a conservative president again who will stack the NLRB with folks who are philosophically opposed to labor unions. According to the AFL-CIO one in five workers involved in a union organizing drive in the private sector faces illegal termination. 92% of workers in a union organizing drive will be subject to anti-union seminars; 78% will have one-on meetings with the supervisor. And unlike the abtract workplace of the Post these supervisors aren't engaging in a macroeconmic discussion of the role of unions under capitalism. The NLRB isn't exactly dragging these employers to jail for this. The Employee Free Choice guarantees workers in the workplace one of our core democratic rights, the freedom of association; a right that even the Post admits is not always protected under current labor law.

As much as the Post tries to make me feel the bosses pain, I'm not convinced that they will get those Congressmen who voted for the EFCA too worried about stepping on the rights of anti-union bosses. There is a big difference between talking about democratic rights in the workplace and actually setting up mechanisms to gurantee it. Congress took a a big step towards the latter last week.