GOP Says EFCA’s Secret Ballot Is Sacrosanct — But RNC Itself Forbids It!
Okay, this is funny. As you know, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act — the Republican National Committee included — like to argue that the measure is a threat to American Democracy because it effectively eliminates the “secret ballot” as a way to decide whether to join a union. The RNC says this in their party platform.
It turns out, though, that the RNC itself forbids the “secret ballot” as a way for the committee to make many of its own decisions!
From the party rules:
No votes (except elections to office when properly ordered pursuant to the provisions of Robert’s Rules of Order) shall be taken by secret ballot in any open meeting of the Republican National Committee or of any committee thereof.
To be sure, this is fairly standard for committees like the RNC. But the point here is that even the RNC is implicitly acknowledging that the “secret ballot” is not the only fair or Democratic way to make decisions by vote. And yet the sanctity of the “secret ballot” is one of the RNC’s central arguments against Employee Free Choice.
And now back to our non-EFCA programming.
Update: The counter-argument, from the anti-EFCA Workforce Fairness Institute, is that labor leader James Hoffa has said secret ballots aren’t the only Democratic way to hold elections, even though his Teamsters union elects its leaders that way.
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{{{YAWN}}}}
Those would be the same Repugs who scream about tort reform and who mostly have sued for damages at least once.
what else is new? Do I have to say this over and over – look up “hypocrite” – there is a one word definition: Republican.
LOL. Love that you found this Greg. Pot meet kettle huh?
This is pretty much irrelevant. Why? Because A) the DNC has the same rules (remember delegate lobbying by Clinton and Obama?) and B) membership in a political party, and *beyond that* membership in a party’s national structures (whether DNC or RNC) is completely voluntary.
However, being barred from a job because the union has decided “the union is not taking anymore people”–or being intimidated by out-of-town thugs to publicly sign a card to make them go away–are questions of coercion and workplace democracy. These issues are not comparable to those surrounding the voluntary association a person might have in the DNC and RNC (which again have the same, public vote rules, much like the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.).
Sorry, I don’t get the point of this post. The RNC rules do provide for the secret ballot for elections to office, but not for other votes. Deciding on who will represent one: a secret ballot. Deciding on other matters: no secret ballot. I don’t see any RNC hypocracy here, just standard secret ballot provisions to prevent retaliation in votes where such retaliation is most likely.
Southerner said, “These issues are not comparable to those surrounding the voluntary association a person might have in the DNC and RNC.” Exactly what I was going to say. I’d like to understand why Mr. Sargent is trying to equate what goes on in political parties, made up of only volunteers, with what could be forced on workers if the EFCA is passed.
Nice post, moron. Makes absolutely no sense, and to the extent there is any logic to it at all, it can easily be picked apart by a child.
lfo: ““hypocrite” – there is a one word definition: Republican.”
EXAMPLE #8,000,000,000,001:
The same Republicons that added over $8 TRILLION to the US Debt over the last three Republicon Presidents are dubbed “fiscally conservative” by the corporate media.
Stefan, you make the Unions point with your comment: “The RNC rules do provide for the secret ballot for elections to office, but not for other votes.”
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Exactly. Unions use the secret ballot for who gets elected to the democratic positions within a union.
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But “for other votes,” like whether or not workers want a union in the first place, EFCA provides an easy, democratic vote that can’t easily be interfered with by the employers.
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EFCA would make much of the union “vote” secret from the employer and that’s what is freaking out the employers.
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Employers regularly use scare tactics to intimidate workers from unionizing as soon as the employer knows that there is a vote on the horizon (because the “vote” is currently not secret).
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Much of the “vote” is controlled by the employer, employers who can (and do) harass employees considering voting for the union. In fact, any employee the employer feels is advocating unionizing risks losing their job. That’s a pretty severe intimidation tactic that the employer sees as their right to use.
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Meanwhile, democratic unions whose leadership is voted in by secret votes are serially demonized by the ever conniving right wing Replicons.
As I understand it EFCA means that the employees can keep the union vote SECRET FROM THE EMPLOYER and that’s what is freaking out the right wing.
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Am I misreading EFCA? Do employees who are gathering card checks required to tell the employer what they’re doing?
News Reference:
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“As I understand it EFCA means that the employees can keep the union vote SECRET FROM THE EMPLOYER and that’s what is freaking out the right wing.
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Am I misreading EFCA? Do employees who are gathering card checks required to tell the employer what they’re doing?”
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You are misreading it. Right now, 30% of employees who want to unionize sign a public petition through the NLRB to set up a secret ballot election. The union knows about it, the employees know about it, and the employer knows about it. What the EFCA will do is allow the public petition to stand as the means of unionization if more than 50% approve it there, and the secret ballot election won’t take place. What it will do is allow unions to pressure employees to sign the petition for unionization in order to keep the elections from happening. It will also allow employers to pressure employees not to sign the petition for unionization.
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What that provision of the EFCA does is place workers at risk unnecessarily, both physically and financially.
SteveIL, you didn’t answer the question. In fact, it seems you warped the question to serve your ability to get the answer you wanted without actually knowing the answer.
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EFCA apparently keeps the union vote secret from the employer and that’s what’s freaking out right wingers.
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If employers don’t know their employees might be unionizing it’s harder for the employer to intimidate the employee, or as SteveIL puts it, give the ability to “employers to pressure employees not to sign the petition for unionization.”
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The question was: does EFCA require the employee’s signing union card checks to tell their employer what they’re doing? If it doesn’t than that means that the union vote is secret from the employer and that’s what appears to be freaking out the right wing trolls.
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SteveIL, you’re a Michelle Malkin reader (the blog you link to gives her clicklove). Michelle Malkin went out of her way to intimidate a 12 year old boy and his family. Michelle Malkin published personal information about college students and encouraged her right wing allies to harass them. Michelle Malkin wrote a book in defense of rounding up Americans and putting them in internment camps. Any one of those things by themselves is incredibly threatening.
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SteveIL, if you’re a Malkin fan, than clearly you’re okay with threats and intimidation. The “profile” box at the top left (?of your blog) even paraphrases Orwell’s “war is peace” as a something you believe in. Wow.
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The entire blog you link to is just nasty, unsubstantiated attacks that’s clearly not connected to reality.
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Though I’ll give the blogger Scipio62(?”SteveIL”) credit for coming out in support of government paid for health care on that blog.
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Sure, it’s just for soldiers today, but babysteps, SteveIL, babysteps.
Thank you, Mr. Sargent, for the Truth vs. (more) GOP Hypocrisy. You can rest assured that I will post it wherever I can, with credit to you, of course. When they read your blog, opponents of EFCA will feel worse than they did when Obama won!
There is a big difference between accountability in a representative committee and the privacy of those being represented. You want the representatives to be accountable to those being represented not the other way round. That is why government meetings are open and voters ballots are secret.