American Workers Do Not Need Democracy

In early April, Senator Barack Obama spoke before a gathering of the AFL-CIO and made a promise to the labor union to ensure that the Employee Free Choice Act becomes “the law of the land”. This bill will strip the rights of employees to cast a private ballot either for or against forming a union. The bill enable union bosses to increase membership by simply having 51% of employees turning in signed cards stating their desire to form a union. This process will be steeped in fraud. It sets up the scenario of union thugs to intimidate employees into signing the cards. The private ballot is a proven effective method of determining each employee’s desire.

Union membership has declined at an astonishing rate over the past 50 years. In 1958, nearly 40% of the American workforce was a member of a union. Last year, the percentage was down to less than 7.5% with a significant number being government employees. The EFCA is a scheme designed to swell the membership rolls of the unions. The Democratic controlled House of Representatives passed the bill last year, but the Senate failed to pass it when the Republican minority blocked the efforts of Obama and the Democratic leadership. Now Obama promises to ensure it’s passage if he becomes President.

Obama claims that this bill will do nothing more than change the process of union forming, but his own past statements continue to haunt him. Obama has said that, the bill “will allow workers to form a union through majority sign-up and card checks”. Why would Obama favor a process that strips the private ballot right from the American worker? I thought that Obama claimed he was the candidate for the little guy? His co-sponsorship of this scheme is a clear indication that he stands with the union bosses and not with the workforce. The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace conducted a survey of union households and the results are clearly at odds with the union bosses and Obama. 80% of all union households surveyed support private ballot elections. When asked specifically about the EFCA, 70% are opposed to the bill.

What I find amazing is that private elections are widely seen as one of the essential elements of our Democratic system, but with this bill, Senator Obama is showing that he believes that private ballots are overrated. If he had simply voiced his support for the bill, it would be bad enough, but the fact that he has co-sponsored the legislation sheds a much brighter light on his ideals. Last week, he admits that he wants to “spread the wealth around”, and now we see that he is willing to throw away the private voting rights of American workers. I would call him a socialist, but we are now told that that term is a racist code word. Should I just call him a Marxist?