By Stefan Gleason
Special to Knight Ridder/Tribune
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/9594050.htm?1c

While working Americans take a long Labor Day weekend to relax and enjoy the fruits of the free enterprise system, union officials continue to work overtime to diminish workers’ freedom to choose whether to join a union.

Gearing up for the 2004 election, the AFL-CIO decided to shelve all operations other than politics and organizing.

Although Big Labor has increasingly stressed these two activities in recent years, why has it reached fever pitch» The answer: Big Labor is in a life-or-death struggle to preserve and expand its government-granted power to force American workers to join a union.

The latest tool is as simple as it is tyrannical: Union officials claim that secret ballot elections on unionization should be banned. In their place, union organizers are pushing an intimidating process in which workers must say «yes» or «no» in public, not the privacy of a voting booth.

Secret ballot elections are already less common, as union organizers have had increasing success in bullying companies into waiving the election process by using attacks in the press, trumped-up lawsuits and pressure from union-influenced regulators and politicians. Under the resulting «card check» agreements, union officials intimidate workers one by one into signing union authorization cards that are counted as «votes» in favor of unionization.

In just the past year, such «card check» schemes have spurred case after case brought by workers documenting everything from bribes to threats and stalking.

Late last year, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., introduced legislation to ban the traditional secret ballot election process. Only three years earlier, Miller and 15 other members of Congress formally implored the Mexican labor minister to establish a secret ballot election process in that country because, they said, elections «are essential to ensure that employees are not intimidated or coerced.»

Replacing the secret ballot election process with «card check» has also become the No. 1 requirement of candidates to obtain Big Labor’s support in the 2004 elections. According to a recent AFL-CIO statement to BNA’s Daily Labor Report, «we don’t have any issue that’s a litmus test, but this is as close as it gets.»

Union bosses once hailed the secret ballot election as the cornerstone of American labor law, but they now claim that secret ballot elections are «unfair» and must be outlawed to save «union democracy.»

The real reason is that fewer employees are interested in what unions are selling these days, and therefore unions win far fewer elections.

A large number of independent-minded employees, especially in the auto industry, are fighting back. Assisted by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys, employees at a Dana plant in Ohio, a Metaldyne factory in Pennsylvania, and a Cequent Towing Products facility in Indiana have won a preliminary victory at the National Labor Relations Board.

In June, a narrowly divided board voted to reconsider prior precedent that bars employees from demanding expedited secret ballot elections to throw out an unwanted union imposed on them as a result of a «card check» drive.

Appearing at a news conference on Capitol Hill in support of related legislation introduced by Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., that would require secret ballot elections in all cases, Dana employee Clarice Atherholt explained: «We’re simply asking for a secret ballot vote so that we can have a say in our future without being intimidated or harassed.»

Unfortunately, Big Labor and its partisans don’t agree. Sens. John Kerry, John Edwards and Kennedy, along with 14 other senators and 31 members of Congress, recently joined together to file a «friend of the court» brief arguing against Atherholt and the other disenfranchised workers.

So as Americans listen to union officials and their allies drone on this Labor Day, let us not forget that Big Labor’s chief goal this election year is to take the freedom to choose out of the hands of rank-and-file workers.

Stefan Gleason is vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, 8001 Braddock Road, Springfield, Va. 22160; www.nrtw.org. This essay was distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in more than 250 cases nationwide per year.