Signing up for unions.

• Author: Gearino, G.D.
• Position: FINEPRINT - Occupational safety and health

It took 16 years, but the Smithfield Packing plant near Tar Heel--where 32,000 hogs a day go in one door and countless pork chops pour out another--is now a union shop. Labor organizers fought, and eventually won, a battle against both corporate hostility and worker reluctance. But their larger triumph was over North Carolina's carefully nurtured reputation as a state where unions tread lightly. As in much of the South, the state's economic expansion has been fueled in part by its right-to-work law, which makes it tough for organized labor to get a toehold--thus attracting business. If you're inclined to worry that the victory by the United Food and Commercial Workers two months ago will do damage to that reputation, don't fret. It's all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

That's because if any plant deserved to be unionized, it was this one. The work is dangerous, injuries are common, and management's tactics were notoriously heavy-handed. Any reasonable person understands there's a time and place for labor organizing, and Smithfield Packing met both criteria. No smart corporation would hesitate to consider opening a plant in North Carolina simply because Smithfield Packing's 4,600 Tar Heel workers preferred to live in 2008 rather than 1938. But don't worry about this one union victory. There's a much bigger problem on the horizon, and it's called the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is a curious inversion of circumstance that unions and corporations have, in one significant way, switched roles. For most of its history, the labor movement has been a rebel force within both the business world and society, so much so that even after Congress established the National Labor Relations Board in 1935 some unions still didn't trust courts to enforce its provisions, opting to occupy factories rather than exchange briefs in front of a judge. Today, the labor movement is so confident of its place in the political mainstream that it can demand from Congress the kind of protectionist legislation not even business can expect any longer. EFCA would give unions the right to bargain with an employer if a majority of its workers simply sign organizing cards. No actual vote on union representation, by secret ballot, would be required--as is now the case. Needless to say, when a labor organizer stands in front of a worker and hands him a card to sign, the power of intimidation, once primarily management's preserve, has clearly shifted. Labor wants that power and...