As safety violations continue, card check still has many opponents
by Brian Leubitz
Despite the deaths and very public injuries of farm workers over the past few years, farm labor is still very difficult to organize. There are many reasons for this, as you can imagine. Great distances, language barriers, and immigration issues are just some of those. In addition, because of these issues, management has great sway over labor. Management essentially has a thumb on the scale of an election process.
Card check wouldn’t end these issues, but it could go a long way towards making labor relevant in farm work. Despite Jerry’s veto of card check legislation, the issue won’t go away quickly. However, the numbers from the recent LA Times/USC poll show that the unions may need to do a bit more work on messaging.
The poll shows that 42% support card check for farm workers, and 45% oppose. Now, those numbers should probably considered somewhat squishy, but not necessarily in the good way. After being read pro and con statements, support for card check fell to 39%.
Farm work is one of the more obvious positive cases for card check. It makes an unmanageable task possible, but hardly easy. Farm workers need the right to organize, and card check just levels the playing field somewhat.
There is an irony that this issue is being polled on the same week as the Republicans have shut down the FAA in a hissy fit over election rules that make it impossible for workers to unionize. Informed voters rightly are against an election that is heavily biased toward either side. The opposite of an unfair election that is biased against unionization is not an unfair election that is biased toward unionization. It is a fair election.
What is needed is a system that stiffly penalizes any attempt to intimidate voters, and a secret ballot. Add in big fines and jail time for anyone tampering with the process. Anything else will never be regarded as fair, because it isn’t. If you can’t win an election under those circumstances, you shouldn’t.