A quick word on Employee Free Choice

The Employee Free Choice Act is set to be introduced in both chambers today, which will kick off a public relations battle over passage in which corporate special interest groups plan on spending some $200 million to defeat it.

Already, the framing wars are underway, with corporate opponents referring to the bill as "card check," and insisting that it somehow does away with secret ballot voting -- sometimes without even bothering to mention that they're talking about secret ballot voting among employees with regard to whether or not they want to join a union, probably hoping that people will become frightened that the bill will somehow eliminate secret ballot voting for elections for public office.

At any rate, the effort clearly has some Congressional Democrats -- including some who voted for the same legislation in the last Congress, when it passed the House but stalled in the Senate -- running scared.

But the reality is that the issue is about employee choice -- a fact that's somehow escaped notice despite the name of the bill. That is, the bill changes the law such that employees get to choose how they want to vote on whether or not to join a union.

And that's not scary. That's just plain old common sense.

Do they want a secret ballot? Or something else?

Ask Joe Six Pack (or Joe the Plumber -- provided you're talking about a guy who's really named Joe and is actually a plumber) whether he thinks the format of the vote on whether or not to join a union should be up to the employees, or up to the bosses.

Go ahead. I think you know what the answer will be.

Think of it -- if you're inclined to this way of thinking -- as deregulating the federal bureaucracy that oversees labor organizing. How do you think you ought to be able to join a union if that was something you wanted to do?

Do you think it ought to be enough for you to say, "Yeah, I think I'd like to do that. Do you guys want to do it, too?"

Or do you think that your boss ought to be able to use federal regulations to force you into a rigid and formalistic process that gives the company every opportunity to fight, antagonize, harass and even threaten you along the way?

How did we get to where the corporate brass are now cheerleading for government regulation getting in the way of how regular people conduct their own affairs? Why, it's socialism, I tells ya!

Hey, if you want to join a union, be my guest. That's the way I see it. Funny how the free-traders and deregulators suddenly want the government in everyone's face again when it comes to whether or not regular people should be able to decide for themselves how they want to tell their friends and coworkers that they'd maybe like to get together and cooperate on some stuff.

If I want into a union and feel like saying so, get the hell out of my way, boss. Nobody asked you. It shouldn't be up to you how I get to express that any more than you get to decide how I invite people out for beers after work.

"Hey, you can't just invite Joe out for beers. You've got to have a federally supervised secret ballot election on whether or not you can ask him."

And while I'm on the subject, I notice now that people are talking about regulating executive compensation, you're not too crazy about federal interference in how you decide to vote on who gets to be a boss. So how about getting your hands out of how I decide who gets to be in my union?