Chautauqua

What follows is actual correspondence between yours truly and his duly elected representative. Not a word has been altered. Names have been deleted to lessen the strain on credulity:

Dear Senator X,

Please oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.  It will not be free.  It will cost an unaffordable measure or our liberty.  It will not constitute choice.  It will institutionalize coercion and corruption.

The secret ballot is a tenet of American democracy and privacy.  This legislation usurps that tenet, eliminating a secret ballot overseen by the NLRB and placing undue and unwarranted power in the hands of union organizers.  It’s hard to imagine legislation deliberately leaving employees and employers vulnerable to those who respect the interests of neither.  If the role of the federal government is to support that kind of usurpation, I have an entire life as a U.S. citizen to re-examine.

Federally supervised, private-ballot elections ensure a union has the support of a majority of employees.  In contrast, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled: “It would be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a card check.”  The Second Circuit ruled: “It is beyond dispute that the secret ballot election is a more accurate reflection of the employees’ true desires than a check of authorization cards collected at the behest of a union organizer.”  The Sixth Circuit ruled: “An election is the preferred method of determining the choice by employees of a collective bargaining representative.”

Why in the world would Congress fix something that ain’t broke?

As my elected representative, please oppose the Employee Free Choice Act and support the Secret Ballot Protection Act.

Thank you for doing right things.

My pal’s reply:

Thank you for contacting me regarding union rights for workers. I appreciate hearing your views on this important matter.

I understand and respect your concerns about this issue. In my view, when workers are able to play a role in negotiating their wages and working conditions, the result is fewer work-related injuries, better employee morale, and greater efficiency.  I believe that labor unions have long been instrumental in strengthening the American middle class and improving the lives of millions of working families by ensuring basic workplace protections, decent and livable wages, and secure pension and retirement benefits.

While your reservations are understandable, I am a cosponsor of Senate bill 560, the Employee Free Choice Act, because in my view it will better enable employees to exercise their right to form or join a union. Rather than letting employers decide the process by which a union is certified, the Employee Free Choice Act would shift that determination to the employees, who can choose either majority sign-up or a secret ballot election.

I am also supportive of the Employee Free Choice Act’s provisions that would deter employers from wrongfully terminating employees who favor unionization. While the great majority of employers act responsibly and treat their workers well, there are still many well-documented cases of worker abuse … that are of great concern to me. I believe that the reforms of S. 560 represent reasonable policy that would promote a safer, fairer workplace for employees, regardless of their sentiments towards forming or joining a union.

Thank you again for contacting me. If you would like to stay in touch with me on this and other issues of importance, please visit my website … and subscribe to receive my regular e-mail issue alerts. Please do not hesitate to contact me again if I can be of assistance to you in any way.

Since that made it clear my initial correspondence had been neither read nor understood, I replied:

Dear Senator X,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my correspondence.

Out of respect for the time constraints imposed by your schedule, I apologize for not having made the point of my earlier correspondence more clear.  I have no concerns about the specific right of workers to choose a union through a “card check” process.  Rather, I have grave concerns about the specific right of workers NOT to choose a union and, by extension, their right not to be coerced, manipulated, or victimized thereby.

I’m only concerned because labor unions already have the power to annul employees’ freedom of choice.  FDR and your forebears in Congress ensured infringement on workers’ ability to work for — and to make their own agreements with — willing employers in 1935 with the passage of the Wagner Act.  That’s why Arthur Goldberg, a former attorney for the United Steelworkers Union, JFK’s secretary of labor, and former Supreme Court justice wrote in 1956, “Technically speaking, any labor union is a monopoly in the limited sense that it eliminates competition between workingmen for the available jobs in a particular plant or industry.”  It’s also why unionization in the private sector dropped from 17 million in 1970 to 8.8 million in 2002 — and is lower now.  Like bobby socks and hula hoops, the time for labor unions — except as channels for corruption from government and organized crime — has passed.  If you can find a copy of Stephen Fox’s book, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America, you’ll understand two things: why S.560 is a disastrously bad idea and why Fox’s book is out of print.  (Hint: Neither government nor organized crime wants you to read it.)

I know I’m getting sentimental in my advancing age.  But I really miss the secret ballot, especially for those who harbor illusions of democracy and free choice.  Those illusions get harder and harder to sustain.  Then again, I’m a guy who’s nowhere near ready to admit — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — that we’ve entered the golden age of political promise, adulation from the gullible, and retribution for the empirically astute.

I’m all for doing things right.  But I ask you again to reward my vote by doing right things.  Please oppose the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009.

Thank you.

So much for elective representation. Is Don Quixote in the house?