My Fellow Employers:

Industry groups who cash my dues checks keep telling me why I should fight the Employee Free Choice Act, and they all make the same argument: EFCA will make it easier for employees to join a union because the Act's transparent election process will enable unions to pressure employees into joining.

Implicit (and often explicit) in this stance is that the existing secret ballot process is more democratic, and that in private a majority of employees would not chose to join a union...because unions will just cash their dues checks and turn around and spend that money on telling employees how to think.

This much is true: EFCA will make union organizing much easier. This Act is not a referendum on “Free Choice”. Even Big Labor isn’t “pro-choice”… it is pro-union. Employers certainly don’t want more democracy in the workplace—do workers get to vote on their paychecks next? And what asshole employee wouldn’t join a union if he was given that opportunity? The rhetoric is about “choice” because "union" is such a polarizing concept (so polarizing that it needs to use the same euphemisms as the abortion issue??), but this Act is not about unions either.

The hand to hand combat over this bill is about universal health care. The main difference between a union shop and a non union shop is that the union workers have health insurance. Unions put so much effort into raising all working standards and the minimum wage that there is not a huge difference between union and non union wages anymore. And no one is fighting over pensions right now. But a union job is a job with health benefits, and a non union job in service or manufacturing is generally one without.

I pay for my employees' health care premiums. If you don’t pay your employees’ premiums, then I guess I pay those too—through higher premiums and higher taxes. If you are my competitor, your lower costs enable you to really undercut my pricing and make it more difficult for me to pay for everyone’s health insurance. So how am I still in business? Well, remember those asshole employees that didn’t join a union when they could have? They work for YOU. You got my sloppy seconds, the workers who showed up late a dozen times during their probationary period, the ones that coworkers didn't want to have to rely on to get their incentive bonuses. Health benefits and union wages pay for themselves, because we are able to attract and retain the most talented, productive, loyal, and resourceful workers.

So how can I afford to pay health premiums for these workers? Unions have quietly become very adept at negotiating fantastic deals on health insurance. Our union plan costs $350 per person. A similar plan for our office workers, who are not union, costs $750. There are a number of reasons for this. First, our union's insured pool is large, homogeneous, and local. 94% of Unionwear’s union employees are women aged 30-55 who live within 7 miles of the factory. None of our office workers lives within 7 miles of the factory. This enables a carrier to tailor a policy towards a demographic and make a deal with a local clinic for the majority of health care--a three tier system: clinic is free, network is affordable, out of network is very high. Second, unions are non profit and do all the marketing, customer service, and paperwork inhouse in spartan offices. How much of AIG’s premiums went to profits, marketing, salaries, and bonuses? A good guess would be (($750-$350)/$750) x (AIG's Revenues).

So if you do pay health insurance for your employees, you can only gain by supporting EFCA. If you are union already, this will make your nonunion competition less competitive and it will lower society's overall health care burden. If you are non union and you pay health insurance costs, chances are a union can lower your health costs without affecting many of your other costs.

That's why the Obama administration has placed EFCA so high on the agenda in the middle of an economic crisis. If EFCA were about strengthening unions, Obama would not be simultaneously proposing policies to weaken the Auto Workers and Teachers Unions. EFCA is about the Obama administration letting the AFL-CIO take a stab at solving the health care crisis. Obama isn't rewarding the AFL-CIO for supporting him. They waited too long after Hillary's funeral to come out for Obama, and it's not like they were going to support McCain. No, Obama is handing the AFL-CIO the same shit sandwich Hillary gagged on 16 years ago, because the health care crisis can't be dealt with when all hands on deck are struggling with the food, shelter, and clothing issue. If union organizers become foot soldiers in the war on uninsured working families, leaving only the unemployable as uninsured, then the health care crisis becomes more manageable.

Does that mean that if you don't offer health insurance you should be fighting against EFCA? Here are some things I can predict with some certainty that will occur during the Obama administration: employers will either be incentivized to offer health care or penalized for not offering health care, or both; it will be easier to organize a union; and the economy will improve. As the economy improves and people get back to work, they are going to want jobs that offer health care. And if you believe my earlier analysis that unions offer much more affordable health care, that means that if most employers end up offering health care, the union employers will actually be more competitive than nonunion employers.

So the last companies to offer health insurance or allow union elections will end up with their reward: the least desirable workers and the most expensive health care.

Even if you don't buy my previous arguments (and frankly, if you compete with my company, I'd rather you keep fighting unions and health care so I can buy your equipment for pennies on the dollar when you goose egg) consider this: Union workers are consumers. Unions are gigantic consumers. In fact, Unions are one of the only growth industries in our economy right now. For example, I sell logo products--uniforms, gear, etc. When a company becomes union, I now have two potential customers: The company, who buys a lot of logo merchandise, and the union, who buys even more logo merchandise, because that's the stuff the employees actually wear.

No matter what you sell, can you imagine how much more you would sell if everyone else's employees enjoyed the benefits of being in a union?

So, when it comes time to decide if you want to take a stand on EFCA, do what most employers do best: think for yourself, and do what's in your best interest: support EFCA.