Brad rightly goes after Mickey Kaus's chicken little prognostications about the Employee Free Choice Act. I don't think Mickey needs to worry, though, since the bill won't pass the Senate, and, even if it does, President Bush will veto it. So rest, assured, Mickey, the economy is safe. Yet, hyperventilating aside, there is an important--and rather obvious--moral reason to oppose EFCA, which is simply that it would do away with the secret ballot for union elections. Brad does not seem to be troubled by the prospect of forcing workers to declare, publicly, their support or non-support for a union, but there is something a tad totalitarian about the whole gambit. Moreover, he does not seem to think that toadying up to organized labor is bad for the Democratic Party, whereas the American people overwhelmingly disagree: 89 percent of them support secret ballot elections in union organizing drives. And, according to a Zogby poll, 71 percent of union members themselves believe the current secret-ballot system is fair and 78 percent want to keep it in place. So, other than people who work for labor unions and would get a boost in their salaries by increased membership, it's hard to see whom doing away with the secret ballot really serves. An ideal proposal would be to increase--sharply--fines on businesses that resort to unfair intimidation in discouraging unionization (like firing workers who show pro-union sympathies). Currently, the NLRB-imposed fines are paltry, and it often makes more economic sense for management to risk paying these fines than to risk seeing a union come to fruition. Driving up these penalties a thousand-fold, while maintaining the secret ballot and expediting the whole election process, is the best way to ensure that workers are protected from abuse on both sides. Jon Chait dismisses this attempt in his column today, writing that:

In theory, it might be possible to create enough regulations with enough enforcement to ensure fair secret-ballot union elections. In reality, it's never going to happen. Hence, the card-check proposal, which would allow workers to organize on their own terms.

In reality, card check will never become law, at least not under this Congress. Why not work for a compromise bill--that will actually pass--that "create[s] enough regulations with enough enforcement to ensure fair secret-ballot union elections?" Update: Andrew sums up the issue well. Considering what British unions were like when Andrew lived in England, it's not surprising to hear he also opposes American labor's latest power grab. --James Kirchick