Ezra gets it completely right. Don’t focus on a particular solution. Focus on the problem.
The problem is that guys in nice suits routinely conspire, in violation of U.S. law, to deny their workers the internationally recognized human right to organize and be represented by a union if that’s what they want, and just as routinely get away with it.
“Card check” is one solution to that problem. And if intimidation were really an issue, which evidence shows it isn’t, the solution to that is a secret-ballot decertification election a year later.
Another solution is quick elections under fair conditions: votes within five days, off-site voting stations, no opportunity for management to harangue employees at work, prison time for firing organizers or threatening to close the plant if the union wins, binding arbitration for a first contract. (Again, with decert as a background threat.)
It doesn’t matter which solution we get to. It matters that we fix the problem. And that means first admitting that we have a problem. From the point of the people fighting EFCA, union-busting isn’t a problem; it’s a solution. (Mickey Kaus is frank about this.) Fine.
But don’t let them pretend that their issue with EFCA is that it’s “undemocratic.” Their issue with EFCA is that it interferes with their project of smashing private-sector unionism.
