In that, a petition or an authorization card with the signatures of at least 30% of the employees requesting a union is submitted to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), who then verifies and orders a secret ballot election.
Introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2005 and reintroduced in 2007[1] and 2009,[2] the EFCA provides that the NLRB would recognize the union's role as the official bargaining representative if a majority of employees have authorized that representation via card check, without requiring a secret ballot election.
[3] Under the EFCA, if over 30% and fewer than 50% of employees sign a petition or authorization cards, the NLRB would still order a secret ballot election for union representation.
"[5][6] In 1969, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the majority opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the use of card check.
Warren stated, "Almost from the inception of the Act, then, it was recognized that a union did not have to be certified as the winner of a Board election to invoke a bargaining obligation; it could establish majority status by other means... by showing convincing support, for instance, by a union-called strike or strike vote, or, as here, by possession of cards signed by a majority of the employees authorizing the union to represent them for collective bargaining purposes."
The Employee Free Choice Act [with its provisions for majority sign-up] would add some fairness to the system…Barack Obama supported the bill.
An original co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, then-Sen. Obama urged his colleagues to pass the bill during a 2007 motion to proceed: I support this bill because in order to restore a sense of shared prosperity and security, we need to help working Americans exercise their right to organize under a fair and free process and bargain for their fair share of the wealth our country creates.
That choice should be left up to workers and workers alone.The AFL–CIO stated the following in arguing that the company-controlled secret ballots actually make the process less democratic: People call the current National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election system a secret ballot election—but in fact it's not like any democratic election held anywhere else in our society.
They control the information workers can receive and routinely poison the process by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing people who try to organize unions.
[12]Investor Warren Buffett stated his opposition to card check in a 2009 CNBC interview: "I think the secret ballot's pretty important in the country.
I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker's democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it 'Employee Free Choice.
'[14]Forbes commentator Brett Joshpe states his opposition to card check as such: Ending secret ballot elections, which first emerged in the U.S. during Reconstruction to protect recently freed slaves, will provide significant opportunity for voter intimidation and greatly strengthen the labor bloc during a time of historic economic vulnerability.
In addition to depriving workers of the right to vote by secret ballot, the EFCA also would mandate binding arbitration in the event management and labor are unable to reach a collective bargaining agreement.
The EFCA would leave the fate of businesses (and their workers) in the hands of a government-appointed panel and would essentially empower bureaucrats to mandate a deal that the free market would not produce.