Business opponents of the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) have launched an unrelenting campaign denouncing the proposal as :"undemocratic" because it would require employers to recognize a union without a formal election once a majority of members of the bargaining unit had signed union cards.
And how do the opponents of the EFCA plan to defeat the bill? By getting the forty Republican members of the 100-member U.S. Senate to block it with a filibuster!
In other words, they are going to protect the democratic right to vote by a vote of just two-fifths of the total Senate. There seems to be something wrong with that picture!
Furthermore, some quick arithmetic also shows that those 40 Republicans actually represent approximately 36.3 per cent of the American population.
The latter figure is arrived at by adding up the total population of the 14 states with two Republican Senators (Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming and Utah) and half the population of the twelve states with one Republican Senator (Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Dakota)
The 36.3 million number is derived by dividing the population represented by GOP Senators, approximately 111.8 million, into the total U.S. population of 306 million
So which system is less democratic? Is it really more democratic to allow delegates representing 36 per cent of the country’s population to prevent legislation supported by Senators representing some 64 per cent, than to require an employer to recognize a union designated by 50 per cent of its work force?
Actually, if Al Franken is ever seated as a Senator from Minnesota and the Democrats stick together, the 40 Republicans will be a vote short. They would then need a vote supporting the filibuster from one of the Democrats, which would then mean that 41 per cent of the 100 Senators could block the bill – still a significant number below a democratic 50-50.
Of course, opponents of the legislation claim that the card-check provision is unfair to employers because it denies them the right to campaign against the union. But what recent history under the National Labor Relations Act tells us what they really want is the right to interminably delay elections while harassing and threatening union supporting and firing union activists.
But be that as it may, it ill-behooves the bill’s opponents to scream "undemocratic" while counting on a minority of the Senate and the country to carry the day.
Or is democracy – like beauty – really in the eye of the beholder.