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Secret Ballots Issue Giving Labor Pains

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By WILLIAM MARCH

wmarch@tampatrib.com

Published: March 22, 2009

TAMPA - The Florida Legislature is grappling with a $7 billion budget deficit, an insurance crisis and burdensome tax increases.

So why are legislators spending time arguing about a constitutional amendment requiring secret ballots when the state already uses them?

Because the amendment concerns a hot national issue for corporate interests - union organizing.

It's being pushed for the 2010 ballot by state Rep. Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach, and seeks to undercut a proposed new federal law that would make it easier for employees to organize unions.

Hasner's proposal is one of a wave of similar amendment drives in a dozen states led by the national organization Save Our Secret Ballot.

SOS Ballot won't reveal its funding sources, but it has links to conservative business interests.

Hasner is on the group's national board, but said he doesn't know where it gets the money it uses to sponsor the amendment drives.

The group was formed in response to the Employee Free Choice Act, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. - a bill that has long been one of organized labor's top priorities and that has its best chance ever for passage.

Some of the bitterest partisan rhetoric in the current legislative session in Tallahassee is over Has- ner's amendment.

"Why do Florida Democrats hate workers?" was the headline on a Florida Republican Party news release about the federal legislation.

Democratic state Sen. Tony Hill of Jacksonville, a champion of organized labor interests, calls the amendment "a stealth campaign by greedy top business executives to bring employees to their knees."

An argument in a House committee meeting last week led Rep. Mary Brandenburg to call Hasner "a jerk." She later apologized.

Democrats also charge that Has- ner is carrying water for national corporate and conservative groups because he wants to run for Congress next year.

Hasner acknowledged he's looking seriously at challenging U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, next year, but said his amendment is only about "enshrining the sacred right to a secret ballot, which I believe is a fundamental pillar of democracy."

Concerns Over Unions

Its key provision concerns how workers unionize.

Under current law, organizers try to persuade employees to sign cards requesting union representation. If more than 30 percent sign, the union can call for an election - which uses secret ballots - on union representation.

If a majority sign cards, the union can be certified as their representative without an election - but only if the employer agrees.

The new law would allow the usual election if employees preferred, but it would also allow the union to be certified if more than half the employees sign cards, without an election and regardless of whether the employer agrees.

The act would also increase penalties for employers who intimidate or fire employees during organizing drives, and would require binding arbitration if an employer and a new union don't reach a contract deal.

Hasner, and corporate and conservative interest groups from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Heritage Foundation, say the Act would eliminate secret ballots by allowing union representation based on card signatures only.

The amendment they are pushing would require secret ballot elections in all cases. They say secret ballots are necessary to prevent intimidation by union organizers or peer pressure that could force employees to sign cards against their will.

Whether a state amendment could override a federal law is another question. Hasner and the pro-amendment forces say it would; some constitutional scholars and pro-union forces say it would not.

Organized labor advocates say the "secret ballot" rhetoric is a sham to cover a union-busting movement.

Although U.S. law supposedly gives employees the right to form unions, said Bruce Nissen, a sociology professor who studies labor issues at Florida International University, in practice that right almost doesn't exist. Current law and lax enforcement, he said, allow employers to get away with a wide variety of illegal practices to thwart unionization.

Union-organizing elections, he and other unions supporters contend, aren't the same as political elections, because one side - the employer - has control over the careers and livelihoods of the voter, and captive-audience access.

"That's a situation we would never accept in government elections," Nissen said. "If it happened in a Third World country, we would condemn it roundly."

Pressure Tactics

The National Labor Relations Board, charged with refereeing organized labor disputes, doesn't report specific figures on the number of employees illegally fired or pressured by management for union activity, or on coercion, fraud or forgery by union organizers.

But studies of figures the NLRB does report make clear that intimidation or pressure from unions is far less common than from employers, said Tom Kochan, a professor of management who studies employment issues at MIT.

"The reality is there's a fraction - less than 10 percent as many charges against unions as against employers," he said.

If the Legislature passes the amendment and Gov. Charlie Crist signs it, the measure would appear on the 2010 ballot. It would need 60 percent approval for passage.

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