Card Check is the voting process in union elections in which the secret ballot is eliminated. An employee votes on whether or not he thinks his company should unionize while a union representative is standing there waiting for him to mark his card. It takes away a true free election–it lets either the unions bosses or the company bosses know who they need to intimidate. The unions have been pushing card check because they believe they will be the winners if it goes into effect. The unions are looking for more members for two reasons–more members means more power and influence politically, and more members will help delay the day of reckoning for the union pension funds. More members means more dues, more dues means more money to pay pensions that have not been fully funded. However, union membership is not growing.
John Hinderaker at Power Line reported yesterday:
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics says unions lost 612,000 members in 2010. That drops the unionized share of the work force to 11.9 percent from 12.3 percent in 2009.”
“In the private sector, union membership is down to 6.9 percent, “a low point not seen since the infancy of the labor movement in the 1930s.” Unions continue to thrive only in monopoly environments, like professional sports and government.”
The report at the Bureau of Labor also states that 7.6 million out of 14.7 million union members are in the public sector. Union membership is highest among older workers and lowest among younger workers. The crunch point for the unions will come when the states are not able to pay the unfunded liabilities that are the pensions the unions have demanded in their bargaining agreements. I don’t know what the legal outcome will be, but there are several states that are looking into something similar to bankruptcy in order to get out from under union contracts. At that point the value of having the union do your negotiating decreases drastically and paying your dues becomes an expense that has no benefit. It is going to be an interesting year for the unions.