‘Card-Check’ Forced Unionism Threatens Job-Based Private Health Insurance

### In Least-Unionized States, Ranks of Insured Have Increased by Nearly Three Million Since 1999

Critics of the major government-run health-care proposals now being hammered out by congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration charge they would destroy private employers’ ability to furnish employees with health insurance at a manageable cost. Ultimately, critics charge, the proposals being discussed would leave employees and their families with no alternative to a government-run insurance policy.

It is outside the expertise of the National Institute for Labor Relations Research to assess the validity of these charges.

However, anyone with a knowledge of the rankings of the 50 states according to the share of private-sector employees who are under “exclusive†union representation, and multi-year U.S. Census Bureau data regarding the number of insured people in each state, can see that another leading legislative objective of congressional Democrats and the White House definitely does threaten job-based private health insurance nationwide.

This legislative goal is enactment either of the cynically mislabeled “Employee Free Choice Actâ€
(S. 560 and H.R. 1409), or of Trojan Horse “compromise†legislation that would, through different means, also help Organized Labor secure monopoly-bargaining power over millions of additional workers and hundreds of thousands of now-independent small businesses.

S. 560 and H.R. 1409 were introduced in Congress March 10, respectively by Big Labor Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and by Congressman George Miller (D-Calif.). In addition to making it far easier for union officials to obtain “exclusive†(monopoly) bargaining control over employees, this legislation would, in non-Right to Work states, also make it far easier for Big Labor to browbeat employers into consenting to fire employees who refuse to join or pay dues or fees to a union.

The Kennedy/Harkin/Miller scheme’s best-known provision would rewrite federal law concerning “card checks.†Under current law, union bosses are already able to acquire monopoly power to negotiate employees’ pay, benefits, and work rules solely through the collection of signed “union authorization cards.†Consequently, individual workers under the peering eyes of union organizers may be intimidated into signing not just themselves, but all of their nonunion fellow employees, over to union-boss control.

However, as stacked as current law is in favor of Big Labor’s forced-unionism power, employers nevertheless retain the right to stand up for their independent employees against union-boss intimidation tactics. But S. 560 and H.R. 1409 would empower union officials to impose forced unionism through card check automatically, with no recourse for any pro-Right to Work employee or employer.

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