E-voting In Replace of EFCA?

The Hill recently had a story on an issue that the National Labor Relations Board is looking into which has business groups calling it the new Employee Free Choice Act. The issue at hand is electronic union balloting, and the NLRB recently released a “request for information” to see how federal contractors would administer such a system.

Business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and Workforce Fairness Institute, which took the lead in drumming up opposition to EFCA, have now zeroed in on this move. Glenn Spencer, executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Workforce Freedom Initiative, said the NLRB is looking for ways to implement EFCA single handily, adding, “They will look for ways around the private ballot, taking the worker out of the privacy of the ballot booth. This is just the first step.”

The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace sent a letter to the board, which said (in part): “Among other adverse impacts, using electronic means to permit off-site, or remote, voting during union organizing elections will subject employees to a level of intimidation and coercion that does not occur during an on-site, private ballot election that is directly supervised by the NLRB. Electronic voting bears a striking resemblance to the card-check scheme.”