Democracy at the ballot box

WHATEVER HAPPENED to democracy?

I can remember as a child learning that one of the most important and fundamental pillars of our democracy is the right to cast a secret vote in an election.

In fact, we often send election monitors to hot spots around the globe to make sure that people voting in countries with emerging democracies or democracies under fire are allowed to cast a secret ballot without fear of harassment or intimidation.

We wouldn't think about holding an election for any office, from school committee to president of the United States, without the protection of a secret ballot.

Then why are unions in Massachusetts and throughout the country hellbent on circumventing the democratic election process, and supplanting the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, to impose what's known as a "card check"? On the federal level, the bill, which has passed the House, is called the Employee Free Choice Act. And in Massachusetts, where the bill has also passed the House, it is known as An Act Relative to Written Majority Authorization Cards. It sounds like motherhood and apple pie.

But here's how it works. A union tries to get a majority of employees to sign a "union authorization form," which designates a particular union to represent employees in any collective bargaining. If the union gets more than 50 percent of the employees to sign the cards, that's the end of the story. It becomes the bargaining unit for all the employees.

It's illegal for anyone to coerce an employee to sign a union card. However, it can be extremely intimidating for an employee, faced with someone waiting for them to sign an authorization form, to say no to such a request. There is no protection of the ballot box. Everyone -- particularly the union representatives -- knows who voted for the union and who voted against it.

Unions argue that secret ballot elections give management the ability to coerce people into voting against the union. No one would condone such tactics by any employer.

But there is something fundamentally anti democratic about a card check election. Even a majority of union members recognize that. In a 2004 Zogby International poll, done for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 53 percent of union members say they would prefer to keep the secret ballot election.

The National Labor Relations Board, the US Supreme Court, and various federal courts have recognized that the card check is inferior to the secret ballot election.

But today, with union membership down to 12 percent of the workforce nationally, union leaders understand that the chances are far greater of winning if there is a way -- sanctioned by law -- that circumvents the secret ballot.

A union election should be conducted just as any fair and open election for any office. That means workers should be able to hear from both sides of the issue -- management and the union -- and there should be an absolute protected secret-ballot election out of the sight of both sides so that there is not a hint of coercion or intimidation.

That's what America was built on. That's the democratic process we export around the world. What's good enough for the rest of the world should be good enough for every worker in America.

Bob Gibbons is the interim president and chief executive of the Massachusetts Hospital Association.