In the escalating debate regarding the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act, much-deserved attention is paid to labor bosses’ ploy to take away workers’ rights to a private ballot in unionization votes. What is often forgotten is that EFCA has the potential to rob workers of an additional private ballot vote. Under EFCA, if a contract cannot be agreed upon within 120 days the matter goes to binding arbitration. The arbitrator’s decision is binding on the company and its workers for 3 years—without the contract ratification vote usually granted to workers. Marc Freedman points out in his article on chamberpost.com:

So favorable is the binding arbitration process to the union position that union negotiators should be expected to drag out the process intentionally to get the matter into arbitration.