Employee Free Choice Act Of 2007--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - June 26, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on cloture on the check card bill. I urge them to do this because a secret ballot is not only a part of the political process in the United States, but a part of a process in many organizations to make sure that people vote their convictions and not their emotions or emotions that have been forced upon them.

I want to use a personal example of why I think, in union elections in particular, a secret ballot is so important. I have told some of my colleagues, not very often, but in past debates on the floor of the Senate that while I was a member of the State legislature, I worked at a factory in Cedar Falls, IA, called Waterloo Register Company. We made furnace registers. I had the glorious job for those 10 years of putting screw holes with a small punch in those registers. I worked there from September of 1961 until the plant shut down in March of 1971. During that period of time, from February of 1962 until the plant shut down, I was a member of the International Association of Machinists. Everything was going all right for that plant until about 1967, 1968, 1969, when our products made by the International Association of Machinists were not being installed by the Sheet Metal Workers Union members in Pennsylvania, is what I was told at the time. Our company wanted us to change from the International Association of Machinists to Sheet Metal Workers. This is not an instance of the company trying to keep a union out. There was already a union there. The company was getting behind the Sheet Metal Workers Union in a dispute that involved an illegal secondary boycott against our products. So our management thought if we were part of the Sheet Metal Workers Union we would get our products installed easier around the country by sheet metal worker installers. Presumably, we were one of the few companies making registers at that particular time that was a member of the International Association of Machinists, as opposed to being a member of the Sheet Metal Workers.

So our company and that union pushed to have an election to change unions from International Association of Machinists to Sheet Metal Workers. It was highly debated. Obviously, machinists and their members loyal to them wanted the machinists union to stay. The company and some workers who were sympathetic to the company point of view would rather have the Sheet Metal Workers Union because we were told they would not stay in business if the Sheet Metal Workers were not there.

We had an election. I forget the exact date. I tried to look up newspaper stories for this debate, and I couldn't find them. My recollection is that in March of 1969 or March of 1970, we had an election. I remember driving 100 miles from Des Moines where the legislature was in session to my factory--I had a leave of absence--to vote in that election. I don't mind telling people how I voted. I voted to keep the International Association of Machinists because I had been a member for 6 or 7 years. I thought they were serving my interests right. I wanted to keep them in there, and I didn't believe the story of the management and I didn't believe we should ratify an illegal secondary boycott.

In the meantime, we obviously got a lot of pressure both ways--from the machinists to keep the machinists, and we got a lot of pressure from management to change the union. There was a lot of intimidation. But we could go into that secret voting booth and cast our ballot, and nobody knew how we voted. We did vote, and we kept the International Association of Machinists in that particular election.

I know the overall reasons haven't changed in the last 40 years to have a secret ballot. They have been debated well here. But I thought I would share with my colleagues a personal story about the intimidation that can come from management, not necessarily from the union, to vote a certain way.

Consequently, I was fortunate we were able to keep our International Association of Machinists, and everybody went on happily until the plant finally closed down a couple years later.

So, I urge colleagues to vote against cloture and preserve the secret ballot to ensure that the intimidation that can be active by management as well as labor isn't used.

Source