Dorf on Law

After I blogged yesterday on the decidedly ill-informed Wall Street Journal op-ed regarding the Employee Free Choice Act, I got to wondering why the Journal wasted ink and paper on a bill that died in the Senate nearly 1½ years ago on a 51-48 cloture vote. The answer, I think, was revealed in this morning’s Journal. Yesterday’s op-ed was a lead-in to set the stage for today’s lead editorial entitled “Big Labor’s Comeback,” which explains in Journalese why card check authorization will spell the end of life on Earth as we know it. Unlike the Marcus op-ed yesterday, today’s editorial isn’t simply ill-informed. Rather, it’s completely wrong. It says The main vehicle [for rewriting federal law to promote union organizing] is “card check” legislation, which would eliminate the requirement for secret ballots in union elections. Unable to organize workers when employees can vote in privacy, unions want to expose those votes to peer pressure, and inevitably to public intimidation. This w...

I am not much of a fan of horror fiction. I do not read Stephen King. When I am in the mood for a mix of something scary stupid however, I need only open the pages of the Wall Street Journal and read the editorials and opinions. One of today's Journal horror stories is an op-ed by Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, in which he rails against a proposed piece of legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act. He claims that enactment of this amendment to the National Labor Relations Act would “virtually guarantee that every company becomes unionized.” Mr. Marcus's view echoes that of many others who oppose unionization in the workplace. Since this is a presidential election year, the electorate necessarily is focused on election mechanisms, and little is more emblematic of American elections than the secret ballot. It’s understandable, then, that much of the criticism of the Employee Free Choice Act centers on the canard that it eliminates the “secret ballot.” [1] ...