[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 8752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         TESTIMONY OF LARRY GETTS, EMPLOYEE OF DANA CORPORATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, there was testimony before the 
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions just recently 
by a fellow named Larry Getts who is an employee of the Dana 
Corporation in Indiana. He was very concerned that the secret ballot on 
whether or not they were going to join a union was not being given to 
them. And I would like to read part of his testimony.
  He said, ``Before I begin, I'd like to say that, as many workers have 
learned firsthand, I believe Card Check organizing drives put the 
interests of the union officials ahead of those of the workers.
  ``While the bill has been officially named the Employee Free Choice 
Act by its proponents in organized labor and their allies in Congress, 
my own personal experience shows a more appropriate name would be the 
Worker Coercion Act.''
  He talks about the union officials and how they came to the company 
to try to get them to join the union through what they call Card Check 
without a secret ballot.
  He said, ``After this first attempt to organize our shop failed, the 
UAW changed tactics and sent in a whole new crew. At that point, it 
became clear to all of us that the UAW was going to do whatever was 
necessary to get the required number of signatures.
  ``The entire time they were constantly badgering us to sign the 
cards. I refused to sign the card every time they asked, and I know 
that many of my colleagues shared my sentiment. But none of that 
mattered to the UAW, because the pressure did not let up.
  ``In fact, one day, an official approached me again claiming 50 
percent of the plant had signed, so now I was going to have to sign the 
card to `get my information in the system.' I signed the card because I 
thought I had to.''

                              {time}  1630

  I didn't learn until later that even then, I should not have been 
forced to sign the card.
  In the end, the UAW did succeed in organizing our plant, but I 
thought they succeeded only because of their confrontational tactics 
and not because the majority of our workers wanted UAW representation.
  So immediately, after the union came in, I began a decertification 
effort. The only reason I was able to fight back was because other Dana 
Corporation employees in Ohio appealed to the National Labor Relations 
Board after facing aggression from the UAW, and the NLRB decided that 
workers should be allowed to seek decertification.
  Of course, the UAW responded to my effort by increasing the pressure, 
and even started visiting me at my home, and my coworkers. Despite 
their intimidation, my coworkers and I voted to decertify the UAW 45 
days after the Card Check drive in a secret ballot. I believe the 
results of the secret ballot election showed the true free choice of my 
coworkers regarding UAW representation. We didn't want the UAW 
representation that was foisted on us through Card Check.
  At the end of the day, the voice of the worker needs to be 
considered. Union officials say they speak for the workers, and they 
say passage of the Card Check bill is needed to give workers a free 
choice. But the only way to give workers a free choice is the way we 
vote in this country, and that's to give them a secret ballot. If they 
want to join the union, they should be able to join the union through a 
secret ballot. But if they don't want to join the union, they should 
not be coerced into joining the union by signing a card. They should 
have the right, as every American citizen does, to a secret vote on 
whether or not they want to be employed in a union shop. Now, if they 
don't want to do that, they shouldn't have to vote for it.
  And that's exactly what the gentleman went through and all of his 
coworkers. And after they went through it and were forced to join the 
union, they found out they could have a secret ballot, they did a 
secret ballot, and they threw the union out.
  I'm not an anti-union person, but there ought to be a free choice for 
people to join the union or not to join it, and they should not be 
coerced by Card Check.

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