The National Association of Manufacturers' Carter Wood has a post on The Hill's  Congress Blog entitled:  Card Check Update: Union Bill Opens Door to Coercion.  Mr. Wood notes that Employee Free Choice Act proponents are spending a lot of time lately talking about the great things they believe would happen if the bill is passed: 

Labor and their allies promise the bill will achieve social justice, increased wages, better health care, generous pensions and everything short of a picnic atop the Big Rock Candy Mountain . . . .

Mr. Wood  goes on to point out that  EFCA proponents don't talk much these days about how the bill would work, including how it  "really means elimination of the federally supervised employee elections, conducted via a confidentiality-protecting secret ballot."

But the AFL-CIO did talk about that just yesterday in a blog post entitled "Employee Free Choice: Minnesota’s Coleman Doesn’t Get It."  Only the AFL-CIO says that claims by  "business groups" that the bill would ban elections are false.  The post, part of the on-going efforts to persuade Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) to support the bill, states:

Minnesota AFL-CIO Mobilizing and Organizing Director Candace Lund said that Coleman’s stance is based on a “deliberate misunderstanding of the bill.” She explains that the law would allow workers to choose a secret-ballot election or a majority sign-up process when deciding on a union. Business groups—and Sen. Coleman—claim the bill would ban the elections. Not true.

Of course, Ms. Lund is absolutely correct in pointing out that NLRB secret ballot elections would not be banned or eliminated under the proposed legislation.  But it is misleading for Ms. Lund and others  to suggest that “workers” would be able to choose that option. That leaves one with the impression that any worker can go to the NLRB and have the matter put to a secret vote.  The reality is that the holder of the authorization cards -- the union -- would be the only party with an option.  And, having spent tens of millions of dollars on legislation requiring card-check recognition, it is hard to imagine that a petition for a secret ballot election would be anything but a last resort for any union organizer.  Any suggestion to the contrary is about as credible as the Big Rock Candy Mountain so cleverly referenced by Mr. Wood.

The truth is that, except in rare circumstances, employees now have the right to vote in a secret ballot election to determine whether they want to be reprsented by a union.  The EFCA would  "really mean" that right would, for all practical purposes, vanish.

See also:

Big Rock Candy Mountain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia