[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 11, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Page S2995]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   POLITICAL EXPRESSION WITHOUT FEAR

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I wish to address the so-called card 
check legislation which was introduced in both the House and Senate 
yesterday.
  As Americans, we expect to be able to vote on everything from high 
school class president to President of the United States in private. 
Workers expect the same right in union elections. This legislation goes 
against that fundamental right of political expression without fear of 
coercion.
  We have had the secret ballot in this country for 100 years--130 
years, at least--and it was common even before then. We have said to 
other countries around the world: If you want to have a democracy, you 
have to have a secret ballot. And yet this measure, to put it simply, 
would be better called the ``Employee No Choice Act.'' It is totally 
undemocratic. To approve it would be to subvert the right to bargain 
freely over working terms and conditions. It would strip members of a 
newly organized union of their right to accept or reject a contract.
  In addition, this bill ushers in a new scheme of penalties which are 
antiworker and which apply only to employers and not to unions. Even 
though Americans have regarded secret ballot elections as a fundamental 
right--as I indicated earlier, for more than a century--some Democrats 
seem determined to strip that right away from American workers.
  If this were not bad enough, a study released last week by economist 
Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar showed that if enacted, card check legislation 
could cost 600,000 American jobs--600,000 American jobs potentially 
lost. At a time when all of us are looking to stimulate the economy and 
put Americans back to work, we are threatening to undermine those 
efforts with this job-killing bill.
  Republicans will oppose any legislation which attempts to undermine 
job creation, and we will oppose the effort to take away a worker's 
right to a secret ballot.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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