Obama Backs 'Card Check'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama told labor leaders yesterday he remains committed to passage of legislation making it easier to form unions, but he did not offer any timeline.

Obama made the comments at a White House meeting with more than a dozen labor leaders, including AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, SEIU President Andy Stern and Change to Win Chair Anna Burger.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — also known as "card check" — has been stalled for months as lawmakers work out a compromise that can satisfy several wavering Democrats. The union bill needs 60 votes to defeat an expected GOP filibuster in the Senate.

BACKGROUND. EFCA is proposed legislation to “amend the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to establish an easier system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.”

Currently, NLRA establishes two primary ways that employees are able to form or join a union: 1) a private ballot election administered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after at least 30 percent of workers have signed authorization cards or 2) the collection of signed authorization “check cards” from a majority of employees in a bargaining unit.

EFCA fundamentally alters the NLRA by allowing unions to used the “card check” process or signature campaign each time they try to organize employees. If enacted, EFCA would require the NLRB to certify any union that secures a simple majority of signatures through this petition-like process. Such a process effectively allows the establishment of unions everywhere without a valid vote. Under the “card check” method, union organizers present employee signatures on authorization cards as representing the true intent of the workers. However, even a Federal Appeals Court has noted that, “Workers sometimes sign union authorization cards not because they intend to vote for the union in the election, but to avoid offending the person who asks them to sign, often a fellow worker, or simply to get the person off their back.”

Many businesses, including pest control businesses, believe that the only way to guarantee worker protection is through the continued use of a federally supervised private ballot so that personal decisions about whether to join a union remain private. Swapping federally supervised private ballot elections for a “card check” process tramples the privacy of individual workers who should not have to reveal to anyone how they exercise their right to choose whether to organize their coworkers in a union.

At NPMA Legislative Day 2009, attendees were urged to lobby their representatives to vote against this legislation.