Op/Ed: Virginia’s ‘Right to Work’ Laws Endangered

By Rex Hammond
Published: October 18, 2008

The meltdown on Wall Street and the ongoing news of hundreds of billions of dollars bailout of a number of troubled financial institutions clearly illustrate that our nation’s economy is going through very turbulent and uncertain times. It is times like these that demand some measure of stability for consumers and businesses alike. Unfortunately, there are efforts being made on the federal level by organized labor that could bring anything but certainty into work places here in Lynchburg, around the commonwealth, and throughout the country.

Organized labor is pushing legislation that would dramatically change how America’s workplaces can be unionized. The legislation is formally called “the Employee Free Choice Act” (which is a real misnomer given the fact that there is nothing about this bill that would give workers freedom of choice). The legislation is more commonly known as “card check.” The card check legislation, which will likely come before Congress sometime next year, would eliminate the requirement for a secret ballot election for workers to determine whether they will join a union. When the secret ballot is eliminated, real freedom of choice is eliminated as well because without the privacy and protection a secret ballot election affords, workers will face the very real prospect of coercion and pressure from union bosses to join the union.

For decades, our Chamber has supported the continuation of Virginia’s Right to Work laws. In partnership with the National Federation of Independent Business, the Chamber has scheduled a breakfast meeting to discuss this growing threat to small businesses. This panel discussion is set for 7:30 to 9 a.m., Oct. 21 at the Ramada Inn. The Chamber wants businesses and workers to know more about what is at stake and why we want to protect Virginia’s Right to Work.

The current law is clear and unambiguous: employees have a right to unionize. The current process for unionization gives employers and union representatives a fair opportunity to state their position, and at the end of the process, it is the workers that have the ability to decide for themselves when and where a union is formed, and that choice is made privately via a secret ballot, without pressure or harassment from union bosses or from employers. The current process works, and works well. In fact, unions win a disproportionate share of secret ballot elections, which makes it very difficult to argue the system is weighted toward the employer.

So if the process works, why is there such a strong push from organized labor to remake the whole process? The answer is simple. As organized labor’s membership continues its decades’ old decline, union bosses would rather change the rules of the game to increase their individual influence and swell their ranks rather than adjusting the sorts of benefits and services they offer members to be more attractive to workers in the first place. How do workers benefit under a system that penalizes younger employers by effectively eliminating merit based promotions, as is the case with the card check legislation? How do worker benefit by allowing a federal arbitrator to step in and establish a binding contract that sets all the terms of employment (wages, hours, etc.) without a vote from the workers themselves, as is the case with the card check legislation? The card check effort is not inspired by workers; it is inspired by the union bosses for the benefit of the union bosses.

It is very difficult to rationalize the elimination of one of the most cherished traditions of democratically elected government, the secret ballot. We have secret ballots in place for a reason. It simply doesn’t make sense to take away that fundamental right, whether it involves a political vote in open elections or a vote in the workplace.

Part of the Lynchburg Chamber’s mission is to promote practices and policies that create successful businesses and, by extension, successful employees. That is why we are opposed to card check legislation. We urge all concerned Virginians to join the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce in taking a stand against the so-called Employee Free Choice Act.

Hammond is president of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce. He wrote this column for The News & Advance.