Senator John Kerry writes an op-ed this weekend in The Herald News on the Employee Free Choice Act; legislation he has strongly supported since 2007. He begins his opinion piece with a strong defense of unions and their value to the US economy, while adding in a full frontal assault on the Big Business interests that are actively trying to
prevent American workers from having rights and prosperity.

"Workers in unions earn 30 percent higher wages on average, and are 60 percent more likely to have employer-covered health insurance. The question is what we will do to empower workers in this new century -- and it should begin with The Employee Free Choice Act's common sense, fundamentally fair mission of making it easier for men and women to join a union in their workplace.

[...] "Powerful, entrenched opponents of the legislation have made a variety of false statements, arguing that the bill will take away workers' right to a secret ballot election, expose workers to intimidation and harassment or hurt the economy. These arguments are untrue and especially dubious because they have no reliable data to back them up. Too often, these objections come from the same people and groups that have enriched and protected Wall Street over Main Street -- among them those who opposed ideas like minimum wage increases and family medical leave, which history has proven are mainstream, commonsense policies."

Meet the new Right-to-Work-for-Less laws: state ballot initiatives to mandate "secret ballot" elections for union votes, trying to preempt the Employee Free Choice Act. On December 30, 2008, a new coalition calling itself the "Save Our Secret Ballot" (SOSB) coalition emerged onto the scene, announcing an under-the-radar state-level campaign to amend the state constitutions of Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Nevada and Utah to require a secret-ballot election for union representation.

What we really have here is yet another misleadingly-named corporate front group, whose real goal is to prevent workers from having a voice in an economy that works for everybody, not just for the wealthy. In Nevada and Utah, the legislature would place the proposed amendment on the ballot, while the coalition has begun to gather signatures in Arizona, Arkansas, and Missouri. SOSB hopes to expand its efforts to put initiatives on the ballot to prevent workers from opting in to form unions through majority sign-up to additional states.

Save Our Secret Ballot (SOSB) is a coalition of right-wing think tanks whose ideas have led us into the current economic crisis, working with individuals with ties to the Jack Abramoff scandal and a recent high-profile financial scandal.

Proposed State Constitutional Amendment

The 47-word amendment reads:

"The right of individuals to vote by secret ballot is fundamental. Where state or federal law requires elections for public office or public votes on initiatives or referenda, or designations or authorizations of employee representation, the right of individuals to vote by secret ballot shall be guaranteed."

The proposed language would require a secret ballot for any election required by state or federal law for:

(1) public office
(2) public initiatives or referenda
(3) employee representation

SOSB suggests that elections for homeowner associations and corporate boards may also be impacted by amendment language in some states.

Who is SOSB?

SOSB appears to be a project of the Goldwater Institute (which wrote the language) and the Heritage Foundation (whose representative chairs the SOSB national advisory board). The SOSB coalition itself has a national advisory board and a number of local supporters who have also been named in the press surrounding the public campaign kickoff.

The SOSB coalition refuses to disclose donors.

Advisory Board members

• Former Rep. Ernest Istook (R-OK), national advisory board chairman, Heritage Foundation. The Congressman received donations from Jack Abramoff (which were later returned), his office used an Abramoff company skybox, and his former chief of staff John Albaugh pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the House in connection to gifts from Abramoff clients. Istook ran for Oklahoma Governor in 2006, but lost in a 66-34 landslide to the Democratic nominee.
• Clint Bolick, Goldwater Institute, author of initiative. Bolick previously worked on defending school voucher programs and opposing affirmative action.
• Jonathan E. Johnson III, President, Overstock.com. Overstock.com was under SEC investigation in early 2008, and Johnson was accused on financial blogs of lying about the company's accounting practices and engaging in improper sales of stock.
• Gilbert Baker, Arkansas State Senator. Baker stepped down as Senate Majority Leader to focus on his own re-election campaign. U.S. Senator Pryor raised funds for Baker's opponent.
• Adam Hasner, Florida State House Majority Leader. Hasner has promoted alternative energy and sponsored a law requiring Florida's pension funds to divest from Iran.
• John Loudon, Missouri State Senator
• Mark Meierhenry, former South Dakota Attorney General
• Brian M. Johnson, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, a project of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform
• Paul Jacob, President, Citizens in Charge, a right-wing think tank.

Other SOSB Supporters

• Tim Mooney, Scottsdale (AZ) political consultant. Mooney was previously involved in an effort to require schools to spend 65% of all funding on direct classroom expenses.
• Audrey Mullen, SOSB spokesperson who previously worked for Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.
• Sydney Hay, President, Arizona Mining Association. Hay registered the Arizona initiative. Hay recently failed in her bid to represent Arizona's first Congressional District.
• Pat Lilly, former city manager, St. Joseph (MO). Lilly says the period between filing for a union election and the election itself was critical to "educating" workers when he himself defeated a union drive among city workers in the mid-1990s.
• Bill Vickery, Arkansas political consultant, co-chair of Arkansas SOSB.
• Carl Wimmer, Utah state representative. Wimmer apparently plans to sponsor the amendment in the Utah legislature.
• Tibi Ellis, Nevada state chair of SOSB
• Dave Rouchka, owner of Medallion Electric (Sedalia, MO), co-chair of Missouri SOSB
• Glenn Hamer, President, Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Jeff Roe, Kansas City political consultant

The Saturday, Nov. 8 New York Times had a lengthy piece by Steven Greenhouse about the growing chorus for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would restore free choice for people who want to join a union.

Towards the end of the article is a simple sentence that bears further examination, because it gets to the heart of why we need Employee Free Choice: the coercive campaign to which companies subject their employees in their efforts to stop workers from organizing.

Union officials say they do not dislike the secret ballot, but rather the lengthy, expensive, adversarial campaign before the vote in which companies often fire union supporters and use videos, large meetings and one-on-one sessions to pressure employees to vote against unionizing.

I'm going to attempt to cut to the core of why we need free choice restored for employees. Why do I say "restored"? Because for people who want to form a union today, there are essentially two ways you can do so:

1. Work out an agreement with your employer to recognize the union when a majority of workers say they want one. (About 500,000 people have done this in the U.S. in the last five years.)
   
2. Get really lucky after your employer forces a "lengthy, expensive, adversarial" campaign when they refuse to recognize your union.

Hang with me here, because it's really important to understand how this works in order to know why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.

Workers want to form or join a union because they feel the need to stand together with their colleagues to protect their interests on the job. Their interests could be things like workplace safety for construction workers, safe staffing levels for nurses, or decent wages and benefits for grocery store workers. They feel they're not being respected or treated well enough, and they make the significant decision to come together in a union to stand up for each other.

Make no mistake: it's a big deal for workers to take this step. You're deciding to officially come together, to ask to negotiate collectively with your employer, to stand up for yourselves as a group so you can provide for your families.

At this point, people who want to form a union sign cards that express their intent to do so. Now, the law says the workers can request to vote for a union with only 30 percent of the employees who sign cards. But what usually happens is at least 50 percent, and usually upwards of 60 percent or 70 percent of workers will sign cards saying they want to form a union. Like I said, it's a big step to come this far, and in order to be successful you need to have strong solidarity among your coworkers.

Now once the employees know they have a majority of support for forming a union, they approach their employer and ask that the company recognize the employees' union and sit down to negotiate a contract.

Here's where the roads diverge. There are some companies who immediately recognize their employees' unions. Indeed, some big name companies do just that, including AT&T, Harley Davidson, and Kaiser Permanente, because they see a partnership with their workers as a competitive advantage.

But many, many other companies laugh at the majority of workers who want a union, and demand that the majority of workers again show they want a union in a "secret ballot election," - which occurs after what Greenhouse described as "the lengthy, expensive, adversarial campaign before the vote in which companies often fire union supporters and use videos, large meetings and one-on-one sessions to pressure employees to vote against unionizing."

What does this campaign look like?

About 49 percent of employers openly threaten to close down a worksite when faced with a unionization drive. Untold more tell individual workers, in captive meetings, that jobs will be lost. 30 percent make good on the threat in real time, firing workers who engage in union activities. 82 percent hire unionbusting consulting firms which teach them how to most effectively shutter a union drive while either technically staying in the limits of the law, or breaking it in such a way that the gains will outweigh the eventual fines.

"Get really lucky," as I called option #2 for how to form unions today, entails somehow retaining a majority of supporters of a union after the multi-week intimidation campaign carried out by the same people who write your paycheck.

I need to again quote Ezra Klein at length because he explains these intimidation campaigns so well:

You hear a fair amount of talk about card check -- also known as the Employee Free Choice Act -- and you hear a lot of folks on the Right earnestly wring their hands over the idea that if workers sign cards in order to unionize, they will be intimidated! Pressured! The sanctity of the secret vote will be shattered! Which would all be fair enough, if these same folks evinced even an ounce of concern that workers are currently being threatened, intimidated, and even fired if they dare try and organize. [...]

Hearing the status quo defended as free and fair is like imagining a presidential election where you can vote however you'd like, but anyone who votes against the incumbent party is informed they will lose all access to Social Security, Medicare, and the protection of their local police and fire departments. Also, they'll be audited. But nevertheless: Folks can vote however they want.

That's the state of "free choice" in America for people who want to form unions. That's why I said we need to restore free choice with the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Employee Free Choice Act says companies need to recognize their employees' unions when a majority of them say they want to form a union. It's a system called "majority sign-up" because it recognizes the democratic principle of 50 percent +1, and respects the workers' free choice.

The Employee Free Choice Act has the support of almost every single Democrat in Congress, as well as some Republicans. In 2007 the bill cleared the House and got 51 votes in the Senate but was stopped by the threat of a Republican filibuster and veto by Bush. This year, a majority of voters support Employee Free Choice, and rejected a multi-million dollar campaign funded by wealthy CEOs opposed to the bill. Employee Free Choice is key to help rebuild the middle class. President-elect Obama supports Employee Free Choice and has promised to sign the bill as President.

Even though we will have President Obama and a solid pro-worker majority in the Senate, the Employee Free Choice Act is going to be a big battle. We're encountering a well-funded opposition that's dedicated to destroying this bill with false characterizations and misinformation.

But for the sake of America's workers - for the chance to rebuild the middle class and make the American Dream a reality - the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act will be an essential one to win.

(crossposted from Firedoglake)