Fixing the rules: Quicker elections atop Big Labor’s agenda

Under current law, workers have a right to hold an organizing election within 45-60 days after a union has gathered enough petition signatures.

But while organized labor and their Democratic allies in Congress have so far failed to eliminate such secret ballot elections altogether in favor of a simple, more manipulable "card-check" system, they now seek the next best thing: quicker elections.

The purpose for all this "reform"? To rig the process in favor of Big Labor.

If the unions have so far failed to get rid of the ballot, they now hope to encourage so-called "ambush elections" making it harder for companies to present their side of the issue prior to a vote.

That's the obvious goal of a regulation the union-dominated National Labor Relations Board hopes to ram through before next year -- when they likely won't have enough members to legally issue decisions.

Under the new rules, the elections could be pushed up by weeks through limits on litigation, simplified procedures and tighter deadlines for hearings and filings.

One problem: There's little evidence that companies unfairly seek to delay union elections. The NLRB's own statistics reveal that unions win 60 percent of all secret ballot votes and that the median time frame between an organizing petition being filed and an election is just 38 days.

"Make no mistake, the principal purpose for this radical manipulation of our election process is to minimize or, rather, to effectively eviscerate an employer's legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining," wrote Brian Hayes, the one Republican on the NLRB.

In fact, employers have as much right as labor bosses do to make their arguments to employees on the pros and cons of unionization. That a major portion of labor's efforts these days seems to be fixing the rules in its own favor is a sad testament to its faith in its own agenda.