The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) yesterday released statewide polls taken in Minnesota, Colorado, and Maine that are bad news for the pet legislative project of the Big Labor bosses – replacing secret ballot union elections with a card check system.  All three polls show that by large margins voters in those three states support maintaining private ballots for workers during elections on whether to join a union.  A CDW press release delivers the bad news to Big Labor:

In the wake of recent news reports indicating that labor unions have spent millions on independent expenditures on behalf of the presidential campaigns of Senators Clinton and Obama and millions more on Senate and Congressional races, new survey research findings warn that support for Big Labor’s agenda, including their number 1 priority – the mis-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) – could spell trouble for candidates in close races on Election Day.

The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) today released results from a series of surveys in the battleground states of Minnesota, Colorado and Maine conducted by McLaughlin & Associates.

Nearly two-thirds of voters in Colorado (68%), Maine (72%) and Minnesota (65%) oppose the EFCA.  Moreover, voters in Minnesota and Colorado would be less likely to support candidates who support the EFCA.  Specifically, a plurality of voters would be less likely to vote for Mark Udall (44%) and Al Franken (41%) if they support this legislation.  Moreover, at least 80% of voters in all three states believe that secret ballot elections are the cornerstone of democracy and should be kept for union elections.

Under current law, American workers decide whether to join a union in federally supervised secret ballot elections.  The Employee Free Choice Act that would replace this secret ballot election with a non-secret process requiring a majority of workers to simply sign a card to authorize organizing a union.  The workers’ signature would be made public to their employer, the union organizers and their co-workers.  Voters understand that a card check system is an invitation to worker intimidation – by management, the labor bosses, or both.   

Why do the union bosses fight so hard on such an unpopular issue?  The short answer is that it will increase their political power.  Andy Stern of the 1.9 million member Service Employees International Union – which is planning to spend upwards of $75 million on liberal political programs this year –  is a big believer in expanding union power by expanding union membership (for more on what Stern is up to, see today’s NRO column by Carl Horowitz, “Labor and Immigration.”).  Stern estimates that passage of card check would result in 1.5 million new union members per year for 10-15 years. 

Right now, private sector unions collect $7 billion in annual dues and use a hefty percentage on pushing their radical left-wing agenda – an amount that would swell with millions more dues-paying members.  Without card check, private sector union membership will continue to decline.  So not only is card check an illegitimate attempt to deny workers a fundamental right, it essentially represents the last gasp of a dying movement. 

Joe Eule