Would you want to cast your vote for president in front of your co-workers? What about having co-workers lobbying for their preferred candidate beforehand? Would you be intimidated if a campaign representative appeared on your doorstep and asked you to fill out an absentee ballot while they watched?
For 2,400 General Motors workers, these may not be hypothetical questions. The automaker is preparing to open two new battery cell factories to support its push for electric vehicles. Because GM will only hold a 50% interest in these factories, its current contracts with the United Auto Workers labor union won’t apply to those workers. As the UAW has made clear, it will attempt to organize them using “card check,” which would subject workers to all the pressure and intimidation that nonsecret voting would entail.
The UAW knows exactly what it’s demanding. Card check allows employees to be unionized if a union presents their employer with “cards” approving representation, which are signed by 50% of employees, plus one. The UAW prefers this system to traditional secret ballots, which it describes as “flawed,” and choosing “the low road.” But the realities of card check are very different from what the UAW, and the labor movement as a whole, claims.
For one, the evidence shows that card check unfairly favors the union. According to the National Labor Relations Board, there has been a “significant disparity between union card showings of support” and later election results. In some cases, this can be as dramatic as unions with up to 70% card support only winning 48% of a secret-ballot election. Even the NRLB has recognized that card check is “inferior to the election process.” Upon examination, it’s not hard to see why.
Voting in public, if card check can even be called “voting,” is different than voting in private. By their very nature, secret ballots allow you to make your choice without fear of reprisal. No one, including your spouse, your priest, your boss, or your co-workers, knows what you marked on your ballot, so there’s no need to fear their pressure in the moment. With card check, that freedom from fear is gone.
No surprise: Union intimidation is common in card check campaigns. In February 2007, former United Steelworkers organizer Ricardo Torres told the U.S. House of Representatives that he had been instructed to “threaten migrant workers by telling them they would be reported to federal immigration officials if they refused to sign check-off cards.” He went on to describe visiting employees at home to “frustrate them” or to “put them in fear of what might happen to them, their family, or their homes if they didn’t change their minds about the union.”
The UAW intimidates workers, too. Testifying in the same hearing as Torres, one employee reported that the UAW harassed him after obtaining his personal information. The UAW didn’t limit its lobbying efforts to work hours; instead, it called employees or visited them at home. Some employees were visited more than five times. The pressure stopped when an employee signed an authorization card.
In another campaign, this one in 2009, the UAW harassed employees endlessly. One worker recognized the union representative “was going to be here morning, noon, and night until he got his numbers that he needed.” After approaching employees on a daily basis, the UAW got the necessary signatures, but employees eventually filed an unfair labor practice complaint. The NLRB ruled in the employees’ favor and ordered a secret-ballot election to be held. When the votes were tallied, the union lost, despite having enough signatures to be recognized by card check.
Beyond intimidation, unions use deceptive practices to ensure victory via card check. Take, for instance, the cards used by the Teamsters. Titled “Request for Employees Representation Election Under the Railway Labor Act,” the card often leads employees to assume that by signing it, they’re simply supporting an election. In reality, their signature says they want to join the union — something that’s only clear in the fine print. Few employees would think twice about allowing their co-workers and friends the opportunity to express their opinions. But many, if not most, would blanch before agreeing to join the union itself. If the UAW moves forward with its card check at the new GM plants, it could pull a similar trick.
Despite these major flaws, labor unions continue to describe card check as a democratic process, though it is clearly anything but. They are also striving to make card check campaigns far more common through the PRO Act, which has passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and enjoys the support of most Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden. The act would essentially let the NLRB invalidate secret-ballot elections in which unions lost, then force unionization on employees by recognizing card check after the fact. This stealth card check option could all but end secret ballots in the workplace.
Workers deserve better than rigged unionization campaigns. General Motors should reject the United Auto Workers’ demand for a card-check election at its two new plants. And Senate Republicans, along with sensible Senate Democrats, should stop any federal attempt to force card check on every American workplace.
Steve Delie is director of labor policy and Workers for Opportunity at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
