Today The Trentonian added its voice to the lengthy list of editorial pages denouncing Big Labor’s power grab. The paper weighed in against the crassly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act,” which would end secret ballot elections for employees deciding whether to join a union. In particular, the paper takes the local AFL-CIO chief to task:
In a recent piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Charles Wowkanech, New Jersey AFL-CIO president, contended that authorization cards, or “majority sign-ups,” could eliminate the “contentious” atmosphere that secret-ballot unionization elections tend create. But the same could be said for any secret-ballot election, whether for local councilman or president of the United States. Contentiousness is what you get with democracy, and democracy is more than worth the price of it, in the workplace and beyond.
Wowkanech raises the specter of management intimidation and coercion. But the specter of intimidation and coercion is the strength of the secret ballot and weakness of authorization-card sign-up. In the inviolable privacy of the voting booth, no intimidation is possible. But given the unsavory records of not a few unions, with card sign-ups intimidation and coercion are not only possible, but likely.