Schock Supports Protecting Secret Ballot for Workers

From the Office of Congressman Aaron Schock

Washington, DC. – Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) announced his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, which was introduced in Congress today. More accurately described as “card check” legislation, the bill would effectively eliminate secret ballots in workplace organizing elections, making workers vulnerable to public pressure, intimidation and even coercion.

“The secret ballot is a cornerstone of American democracy, and it must be protected,” said Schock. “The Employee Free Choice Act gives workers anything but a free choice, instead forcing them to make their views known publicly on whether they wish to join a particular union. It’s unfair, unjust and undemocratic. As some have suggested, if we are going to have card check to form a union, we should have chard check to dissolve a union”

The card check legislation introduced in the House today would require that unions be certified as soon as a simple majority of workers have publicly signed authorization cards. This card check process is notoriously unreliable, because workers can feel pressure from either union organizers or management to vote a particular way. Moreover, a union would be certified as soon as a majority of workers have signed cards, even if a business owner or a significant number of the workers never even knew an organizing drive was underway.

Schock is a cosponsor of H.R. 1176, the Secret Ballot Protection Act which would guarantee workers the right to a secret ballot. H.R. 1176 ensures that no one – not unions, not employers – could ever take away workers’ right to vote in private, by secret ballot.

Introduction of the card check legislation comes at a particularly precarious time for the American economy, Schock noted. The latest U.S. Department of Labor jobs report released last week showed that 650,000 Americans lost their jobs last month, and the unemployment rate has climbed to 8.1 percent. Yet even amid continued job losses, special interest proponents of card check continue to push for the legislation, even though it has been shown to be a threat to American jobs.

Last week, a report from Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the non-partisan firm LECG Consulting, found that America is likely to see a 1 percentage point rise in the unemployment rate for every 3 percentage points gained in union membership through card checks and mandatory arbitration, another damaging element of the Employee Free Choice Act. That translates to 600,000 American jobs lost in the first year after the card check plan is enacted if union bosses are accurate in their predictions that 1.5 million existing jobs will be unionized because of the legislation.