'Free Choice Act' is really the 'No Choice Act'

James Pappas’ letter (“Show your support,” Nov. 22) is an exemplar of 1984 style “double-speak.” Big Labor’s touted Free Choice Act is, in truth, a means to steal away an individual’s right to a secret ballot in a union-organizing election, meaning it should be truthfully called, “No Choice Act.”

The argument that only by forcing people into unions by denying them the freedom to vote will somehow guarantee their jobs is ludicrous. Paying people not to work at the big three automakers didn’t help them remain competitive. One of the major reasons unions have lost private sector membership is the unions have acted more like parasites than champions of the worker.

They have been more interested in political power and perks than they have member welfare. A pattern of forcing albatross contract provisions has driven numerous companies to ruin as has happened to airlines and is now dragging down automakers. It is only a matter of time until the weight of these tactics hit Boeing.

Changes in the global economy are what impact wages, not the presence or absence of unions. We are inexorably tied to this economic interdependence from our needs for resources to finding and holding export markets. Developing countries need export markets for goods to provide jobs in their countries. The world’s greatest rural to urban migration is in progress in China. Does Pappas and the rest of Big Labor ever consider what sort of upheaval would follow disrupting that process?

There are some employers, who won’t play fair. Those businesses will be unionized because that is the will of those working there. It should come to pass by a free and fair election and not by stacking the deck to involuntarily increase the donor base for the Democrat party.

MATT RYAN

Bremerton

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