Hispanic Workers and Small Businesses Stand to Lose with Card Check Bill

By Adolfo Franco.

If there is anything I have learned in over 25 years in Washington, it is that you can’t judge the real purpose of legislation by its title. Case in point is the absurdly named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), an anti-business, anti-worker, anti-democratic proposal by some in Congress to placate the union bosses.

What’s wrong with this gift to big labor?

First, EFCA eliminates one of the most sacrosanct of American ideals: the secret ballot. Accurately coined the “card check”, EFCA would allow union officials to use intimidation to collect enough signatures to give them control of the workplace instead of letting employees decide by secret ballot—a privilege that even elementary school children enjoy in electing their student body representatives. But there’s more. EFCA mandates that once a union is certified, management and labor have 120 days to reach an agreement. If they don’t, the negotiation goes to binding arbitration.

Who are the arbitrators?

Government bureaucrats would be empowered to make unappealable decisions regarding wages, benefits, and workplace conditions with little or no knowledge about the business itself. Employees could find themselves subject to contract terms that they would never have supported or ratified—as is their right today.

Mandatory, binding government arbitration has not received as much attention as the elimination of the secret ballot, yet it may be the most destructive assault on free enterprise in our history. This provision alone would drive up costs and force small businesses to close their doors.

With Card Check, everyone stands to lose.

But the biggest losers are likely to be Hispanic-owned businesses. Why?

The fact is that this legislation makes it significantly easier to forcibly organize unions in small businesses without regard to the unfair and burdensome costs on those enterprises. Small business owners and employees alike would suffer—and Hispanics disproportionately so because so many of the businesses in our community are small or fledgling. Many would simply close.

Big labor union bosses fail to mention EFCA’s real costs to workers and business owners. If this bill becomes law, the sad result will be increased unemployment for Hispanics. In these difficult times, our community needs economic growth and opportunity, not job-killing legislation.

Workers deserve the right to make a decent living with union representation freely chosen through a secret ballot and without coercion. Neither workers nor small businesses need government bureaucrats to negotiate their contracts. And small Hispanic enterprises deserve the right to conduct their business without unfair and burdensome government-imposed mandates that will surely lead some to bankruptcy.

Everyone loses with EFCA. The bill needs more than a change of title. It needs to be scrapped.

Adolfo Franco is currently Vice President for Global Regulatory Affairs at the Direct Selling Association, a global trade association representing over 200 direct selling companies. In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Franco as Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and the Senate confirmed him to that position in January 2002. Prior to serving in the Bush Administration, the writer was Republican Counsel to the House International Relations Committee.

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