87 percent of Americans agree that every worker should have the right to a federally supervised, private ballot election, when deciding whether to join a union.

Secret ballot elections, though not prefect, are the best means with which to insure each man has just one vote. Labor Unions are attempting to justify the removal of free and fair elections in the unionization process. The thinking goes that since secret ballot elections are not perfect, we should do away with them altogether. In their place, according to the Unions, should be a system called "Card Check."

The "Card Check" system (referred to by the Unions as "The Employee Free Choice Act") would allow union organizers to personally administer and collect union ballots. This would ostensibly remove the possibility that employers might attempt to coerce employees from voting for the effort. Of course that onus would then fall upon the union organizers. Furthermore, the legislation proposed in the House of Representatives would punish employers that attempted to make their workplaces better with
improvements to benefits and working conditions.

"Card Checks" are not a new idea. Corporations of the 1920's and 1930's first developed the idea of forcing employees to cast their vote for or against Unionization in front of company management. Needless to say, unions of that era weren't standing for that! But in the precipitous decline of unions across the country, in all areas of private sector business, organized labor has gone "outside the box" for solutions. One being the legalization of voter intimidation.

Why do you think Unions deserve the right to intimidate employees to vote in favor of unionization? It's because they feel everything that is not unionized is just plain wrong. They, like the political Left in the country, feel that the wrongness of the opposition warrants any means necessary to defeat them.

Just so you know, even if Congress votes in "Card Check" legislation, President Bush is sworn to veto it. Keep that in mind as you ponder sitting out the next election because no one representing your specific brand of conservative ideology is running.

While we're on the subject of unionization, one might ask how already existing unions have faired in recent years. Anyone reading this is sure to remember the big California grocery strike of 2003. Well, guess what? The unions are back for more.

Instead of negotiating with the grocery companies, the unions have decided to play games. In response to a recent call for talks, one union sent their answer in the form of a singing telegram. Instead of trying to prevent a strike that will further erode the grocery industry's market share, organized labor has all but insured the strike will happen. The last round of strikes resulted in no real benefit to the workers and when the smoke had cleared, fewer people were shopping at the chain grocery stores. You'll find many of those refugees as the Super Wal-Mart. With fewer customers to service, the grocery chains have been hiring fewer workers. 

Do the Unions really think they can blackmail the grocery chains into giving employees more than they deserve and more than the stores can justify? I think they do. And this is the best example I can think of for why Unions have no place in society today. Their way of doing business hearkens to an era, the 1940's and 50's, when the worker was at the mercy of the employer. Today employers must provide good wages and a decent working environment if they wish to attract and retain the best labor.

In a recent poll commissioned by the Coalition for a Democratic Work Place, of 1,000 general election voters polled, 87 percent agree every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised, private ballot election when deciding whether to join a union. These statistics are backed up by the historical record. In the 1950's union labor made up 35% of private sector employment. Today that number has dropped to just 7.4%. It does not make sense for private sector employees to be
unionized.