My Own Private "Employee Free Choice Act" Hell
To review: For over six months my co-op board has been pushing for shareholder approval to initiate a “transfer tax” — also called a “flip tax” — to raise additional revenue and therefore mitigate increases in monthly maintenance charges and assessments.
Which means that for six months I have been enduring repeated misrepresentations by the board about the economics of the proposal (which, at the end of the day, is nothing more than an unjustifiable transfer from some residents to others; the building’s finances are merely a neutral conduit — one might say a money-laundering conduit).
But that’s all, as I said, old news. What’s interesting now is that after three solicitations, the board still doesn’t have the votes to impose the tax. Which invites two observations:
1. The document the board has distributed to shareholders — three times — is deceptively designed not as a ballot, but as a form to be signed and returned, obviously with the intent that people will simply sign and return it without realizing what it is. There are no clear “For” and “Against” boxes to be checked off. The only way to vote “No” is by not returning the form at all. I suppose this is legal, but it’s wildly unethical in my opinion.
2. At an informal shareholder meeting a month or so ago, a fellow resident asked the board president a simple, direct and perfectly reasonable question: At what point is this “vote” over and the decision made not to impose the transfer tax?
The board president’s response was a curt, almost snarky: Never.
He then went on to explain that the board can, and will, continue to send solicitations until they have the necessary “votes,” (but remember, no real “ballots” were ever distributed). Moreover, the consent forms that have already been returned never expire. (I suppose they can be revoked, but that requires an active effort and again exposes the fallacy of calling this process a “vote.”)
So does any of this sound familiar?
It should, because it exactly mimics the con game being perpetrated by Congressional Democrats in the form of the Employee Free Choice Act (which, incidentally, surely wins the “Most Orwellian Legislative Title” Award™).
The Employee Free Choice Act essentially allows labor unions to avoid traditional votes on whether to unionize and instead solicit consent cards — which are not anonymous. The union will therefore always know exactly who has, and has not, submitted the card. And target, literally, those who oppose unionization.
Imagine having the omnipresent threat of a union thug “discussing” your lack of consent with you. At work, even at home. Any time, without warning. Forever.
Imagine signing the card check and then later deciding that you’ve changed your mind. Since your card check never expires, you would have to take the active step of approaching union representatives and asking for your card back. Think that would be a cordial encounter?
Finally, while shareholder votes, about flip taxes or anything else, can’t be anonymous by their very nature, the same cannot be said about union votes. They have always been anonymous, for the pesky reason that anonymous voting is a core (small-d) democratic principle. Indeed, anonymous voting is a core American principle. The sanctity of the secret ballot should be respected whenever and to the greatest extent possible.
Except where unions are concerned — then screw it, right?
The fundamental fallacy of collective bargaining is that the interests of the union and the interests of employees are always perfectly aligned. They are never perfectly aligned and are often not aligned at all. The nightmarish Employee Free Choice Act is not a transfer of power from employers to employees, or even from employers to unions. It is instead a transfer of power from the employees to unions. The employer, like my co-op, is a neutral conduit.
A nightmarish bill, very likely to be passed in the next Congress and signed by the next president. In the name of “progressivism” and “employee empowerment.”
More generally, as I have noted before: Labors unions were, at best, a Twentieth-Century solution to a Nineteenth-Century problem. They have no legitimate role, none whatsoever, in the Twenty-First Century.
Filed under: Activist Legislators & Nanny Statists, Economics & Finance, Law, New York City & State, Personal Topics, Updates
This kind of thing really scares the hell out of me. Unfortunately, unions are the kind of thing that people blindly believe to be good, and any suggestions to the contrary are rejected. We're going to see a huge return in union growth and power in the next few years. I guess from now on, when dealing with potential places of employment, one of the things I will have to research is whether or not there is a union and how aggressive it is.