Choice or Who Chooses?

In the last post, I started to try and unravel the dispute about “choice.” Various pro-business groups and media are saying that the secret ballot election would go away under EFCA, and that workers would not have a choice.

Technically, that appears to be false. What changes is who gets to make the choice. Who chooses whether or not a secret ballot election is held under EFCA? The employee, not the employer. That represents a tectonic shift… a power struggle for control.

Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group, tackled FOX News over this point:

In fact, the legislation would not eliminate employees’ right to a secret ballot; as The New York Times reported, “Business groups have attacked the legislation because it would take away employers’ right to insist on holding a secret-ballot election to determine whether workers favored unionization” [emphasis added]. Indeed, as the Christian Science Monitor has noted, “[t]he proposed law gives workers a choice of forming a union through majority sign-up (‘card check’) or an election by secret ballot.”
http://mediamatters.org/items/200903120011?f=h_top

No matter which side of this debate you are on, I strongly suggest you visit the link above for the full analysis. The issue of choice, and whether or not EFCA rescinds it, is the major argument for many pro-business groups.

It appears to me that the issue is not about choice, but rather, about who chooses. It’s a relevant distinction for your communications. Until we sort this out, I would not employ the argument about choice in any statements.

The Media Matters analysis corroborates what I have seen elsewhere:

• Choice is a moot issue
• Currently, employers are not required to hold an election. They can voluntarily recognize a union (few do).
• Under EFCA, employees could request an election if they wanted one. The employer would no longer have this option.
• Critical to understand: the decision on whether or not to hold an election, a.k.a. “the choice”, shifts from the employer to the employees under EFCA.
• Absent an election, the employer has no time frame in which to campaign for itself, against unionization.
• Union authorization cards (“card check”) don’t have an expiration date… organizers could (in theory) hold onto them until they achieved the requisite 50 percent + one count.
• Hence, under EFCA, the culture of employee communications would have to shift to continious education mode.

For now, I still advocate pro-active and preemptive communication about EFCA with your employees. You can’t react to cards that have already been signed…