Democrats are fighting hard for the right of Mexican workers to vote by secret ballot on union matters, just a few years after they fought to weaken the requirement for a secret ballot in U.S. union elections.
The Democrats are demanding secret union ballots in Mexico before they’ll consider supporting President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade.
“Critically, previous versions of the [Mexican labor legislation] failed to ensure that workers will be able to exercise a free, secret, and personal vote on the collective bargaining agreement that will cover their terms and conditions of work,” 82 House Democrats warned in an April 12 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. They wrote that the particular provision was of “paramount importance.”
During the Obama administration, most of the letter’s signers pushed for legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have allowed unions to be recognized through cards signed by workers, eliminating the need for federally monitored secret ballot elections.
Republicans are crying hypocrisy. “Why are Democrats determined to deny American workers the right to secret ballot union elections, but willing to uphold them as necessary and correct in Mexican union matters?” asked Marty Boughton, a spokesman for Republicans on the House Education and Labor Committee.
The April 12 letter was written by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., and co-signed by Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and James P. McGovern, D-Mass., among others. None of the signers responded to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
They argued in it that Mexico had to meet a labor rights provision of USMCA that says that Mexico must adopt “an effective system to verify that elections of union leaders are carried out through a personal, free, and secret vote of union members.” These lawmakers have made similar demands throughout the debate on USMCA, sending a letter in April 2018 to Lighthizer signed by 94 Democrats.
A decade ago, Democrats were pushing hard for a different reform in the U.S., the Employee Free Choice Act. Its key provision was that if the National Labor Relations Board, federal agency that monitors union elections, finds that a majority workers have signed pro-union cards then it “shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative.”
The act, authored by now-retired Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., was introduced in four consecutive congresses starting in 2003 and got more than 200 overwhelmingly Democrat co-sponsors each time, but never passed.
Critics have long argued that the proposed system, dubbed “card check,” would leave union elections open to fraud and intimidation of workers, whereas secret ballots protect the integrity of the vote.
“It is the height of hypocrisy that many of the signers of this letter are also on record as seeking to effectively end the secret ballot election for the unionization of American workers,” said Patrick Semmens, vice president for public information at the nonprofit National Right to Work Committee, which opposes card check.
Unions mounted a major push to get card check enacted during the Obama administration, seeing it as key to bolstering their flagging membership numbers, which currently stand at 10.5 percent of the workforce, down from about 15 percent in 1995.
Democrats, the main recipient of union funding, having gotten $50 million in 2018 alone according to OpenSecrets.org, argue that card check was necessary to ensure that workers could form unions. Otherwise, they argue, businesses would use fraud and intimidation to undermine organizing.
In a 2007 House floor vote on the legislation, DeLauro said: “It simplifies the organizing process. It expands remedies for employer interference and intimidation. It commits labor and management to collective bargaining.”
Pascrell’s website still notes his support for the Employee Free Choice Act, touting himself as an original co-sponsor and claiming the legislation would “restore workers’ rights by removing obstacles that prevent workers from choosing whether or not they want to form or join a union.”
In the case of Mexico, however, Democrats have argued that the existing labor laws allow businesses to co-opt unions, resulting in labor leaders that serve the businesses’ interests, rather than the workers’. Secret ballot union elections would help stem this abuse, they argue, by ensuring that workers elect leaders that represent them.
The Mexican legislature’s lower house passed a labor reform bill last week which is expected to pass the full legislature by the end of the month and be signed by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The White House is eager to get USMCA passed soon before it loses any momentum in Congress, but Democrats are taking a “wait and see” approach.
“Democrats will evaluate after the reforms become law. We remain committed to ensuring labor provisions are strong and fully enforceable in the USMCA,” Aaron White, spokesman for Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., a member of the Ways and Means Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
