Vote? No

Coming soon to a national legislative body near you: the Employee Not Really Free to Make a Choice Act. This bill, sometimes referred to as the “card check” legislation would do away with the secret ballot process to creating a new union (though supporters say it doesn’t do away with the secret ballot, just gives people another way beside the secret ballot).

My grandfather served as the shop steward for his union and I’m sure had many stories he could have shared with me, except for the inconvenient truth that he died 31 years before I was born. Nonetheless, I believe I can understand where this person is coming from with reference to the upcoming constriction of our freedom:

Granted, labor unions aren’t what they used to be, and neither are votes. Like many an institution that started out with a great idea, unions have become self-oiling cash machines of little use to anyone but the bureaucrats and fat cats that feed off them. Do union members really benefit as they once did? In some unions, maybe. I haven’t seen it. Mostly, as far as I can tell, labor unions exist as mechanisms for collecting union dues, which are used for various purposes including greasing the skids for politicians who will do whatever it takes to keep those union dues rolling in. I can hear the wheels turning: Are those pesky secret ballots limiting the number of union shops because workers don’t want to pay union dues for benefits they’re already getting? Get rid of ‘em! Coercion is so much more efficient.

[...]

Okay, another expected defeat for traditionalists like myself, a defeat (unlike others pending) that is not even a sacrilege against the Constitution, which doesn’t guarantee the right of a secret ballot. But I don’t even apologize for fearing that this is just the middle of the beginning of the end of the secret ballot across the board. First workers fill out a convenient card, bypassing that pain-in-the-neck secret ballot, getting people used to the idea. Later, somewhere down the line, you and I point and click on a convenient screen (maybe even the TV screen following a really rousing speech), bypassing that pain-in-the-neck trip to the polling place. Goodbye, secret ballot, goodbye.

Sounds a bit farfetched? Remember, no law which is passed is exempt from that greater law (some might even call it a natural law): the law of unintended consequences. The writer of the piece above is not alone in the belief that passing EFCA may well lead to much less freedom down the road.