Obama's 'Card Check' is anti-democratic

Right after Tuesday night’s presidential debate ended, a new ad was aired featuring 1972 Democratic standard bearer George McGovern, who, until Barack Obama came along, was easily the most liberal presidential nominee ever. McGovern was a reliable Big Labor ally throughout his Senate career, but not now. In the TV ad, he blasted Obama’s “Card Check” proposal to abolish secret ballots in union representation elections in the workplace. Secret ballots must be preserved, he said, “because democracy is something that should never be sacrificed.”

Card check – aka the “Employee Free Choice Act” - would require all employees to pay union dues as soon as 50 percent of employees sign a petition (a “card”) demanding a union. Without secret ballots, everybody will know who didn’t sign the petition, which will likely subject them to union retaliation and intimidation. As McGovern wrote in a recent column in The Wall Street Journal, “There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.”

Yet union bosses hold so much sway within Obama’s party that every Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted for the card check bill in 2007. It was defeated only by a Republican filibuster. The measure passed overwhelmingly in the House. Virginia’s U.S. Rep. James Moran and Maryland’s U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen separately met recently with The Washington Examiner editorial board, and offered sheepish explanations of their votes for card check. “I’ll vote with my party,” Moran said. “There are only so many things I can take on. As a Democrat, you choose your battles. My battle with organized labor is on trade.”  Van Hollen offered little better. “Workers who were trying to organize were not getting a fair shake,” he said. “But I want to stress that there is an opportunity here after this election to look at this whole situation… and figure out the best way forward.” Pressed to explain why card check is the answer, Van Hollen demurred.

Obama isn’t demurring. He clearly doesn’t care about protecting workers from intimidation by union goons because he recently vowed that Democrats "will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It's not a matter of if – it’s a matter of when.” When a right as essential to democracy as the secret ballot is at stake, Democrats should recall what JFK said – “sometimes the party asks too much” – and follow McGovern’s courageous example instead of Obama’s slavish devotion to Big Labor’s agenda.