Card Check Neutrality

Adam Ritscher is quoted extensively in a story about the "poverty wages" of Duluth's hotel workers. Adam is apparently a socialist. For some reason I've been receiving email regularly from Mr. Ritscher on many topics. He concludes his missives with the salutatorian, "redily yours." 

The most recent email, in late April or early May of 2002, called for a rally to condemn America's military action in Afghanistan and Israel's crack down in Palestinian's.

Mr. Ritscher seems to have a black and white view of the world in which America's foreign policy is always bad. I wrote him back that while our unqualified support of Sharon in Israel was a mistake our action's in Afghanistan were nothing short of a godsend for most Afghanis. 

This black and white view of foreign policy seems also to permeate Mr. Ritscher's views of labor/management relations. I strongly disagree with Mr. Ritscher's call for "card check neutrality." Adam feels that hotel owners pressure their employees to vote against unionization in organizing elections. He may be right about this. Whether Adam is right or wrong, however, his shortcut to establishing a union, the card check, is absolutely the wrong way to go about it.

Card check neutrality is anti-democratic. We have borrowed the Australian ballot, otherwise known as the secret ballot, for our elections. Before American voters had the right to cast their votes in secret powerful organizations were able to watch and record every vote an American cast. In some localities casting an unpopular vote could mean a severe beating or being run out of town on a rail or worse. This is the power that people like Mr. Ritscher are asking to give unions when they call for the card check.

In a card check the card becomes the ballot. Signing it (voting yes) or not signing it (voting no) becomes a public act. Employees failing to turn in signed cards could be subject to harassment by union supporters. No election in America should be subject to intimidation. Free elections can only be guaranteed with secret ballots.

It may be that today's labor/management pendulum has swung too far in management's favor. Even if this is true pushing it back in labor's favor by compromising free and fair elections is not an option. Unions will simply have to find other ways of persuading employees form unions and take advantage of their collective bargaining rights.

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