For more than a year, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have argued that its card-check mechanism for union-organizing elections would create opportunities for thuggery and corruption that would make organizing elections unreliable.  Finally, the government has agreed with that position … or at least one part of the government.  Legal Services Corporation has sued its employees to prevent a card-check election from organizing its labor force:

While the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress press to allow private-sector workers to unionize by signing authorization cards instead of voting by secret ballot, the government’s legal-aid program for the poor has declared the so-called “card check” strategy “unreliable” and rejected an effort by some of its own workers to organize that way.

The Legal Services Corp., a congressionally chartered, taxpayer-funded entity, even hired a law firm to rebuff the efforts of workers in its oversight offices to gain union representation by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), forcing the workers to conduct a vote by secret ballot later this week.

The LSC’s decision has prompted concerns on Capitol Hill that the government may be trying to impose a solution on private businesses that its own agencies and panels are reluctant to follow.

Calling himself a longtime supporter of the LSC and its mission, Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, in a letter last week obtained by The Washington Times, said it was “troubling to learn that LSC is now using hard-fought-for taxpayer funds to retain a law firm and engage in a campaign to potentially frustrate employees’ desire to exercise their right to join a union.”

Harkin’s argument is specious.  If a majority of LSC’s employees want to join a union, then a secret-ballot election will deliver that result.  The problem for the IFPTE is that they can’t get a majority to vote for organizing, and they need card check to put pressure on the reluctant employees to surrender. In a secret ballot, neither the employer nor the union knows who cast which vote, so that neither can exact any retribution — which is what makes secret ballot elections the most reliable.

If Harkin really had the best interests of employees in mind, he would fight tooth and nail to protect the secret ballot.  Instead, he wants to strip workers of an essential element of protection and democracy.  Whose interests does that serve?  Not the workers, that’s for certain.

Congress should take a lesson from the LSC, which has its own motivations to be sure, but also is acting to protect its employees from union arm-twisting.