The Wall Street Journal today opines on the most recent attempt by the SEIU to obfuscate on EFCA. Well it was the most recent attempt at the time; the SEIU used the opportunity skew anew (h/t Bret Jacobson):

Corporate front groups' one-line attack on the Employee Free Choice Act is the false claim that it somehow eliminates the secret ballot option for workers to join unions. Although it's blatantly false and dishonest, desperate corporate interests continue to hammer that argument without shame.  But it seems one of their closest allies is finally willing to acknowledge the truth. In this morning's Wall Street Journal, the corporate-friendly editorial board admits:

"The bill doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act," wrote the WSJ.

There you have it. The Employee Free Choice Act "doesn't remove the secret ballot."

Wow, talk about a dishonest, desperate, and lacking shame. What the WSJ actually wrote was:

"The bill doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter."

Ya see what they did there? Jeez, c'mon guys, the The Commissar Vanishes was an admonition, not a how-to manual. In the absence of support what the unions are peddling is The Big Con, and like any good con, the EFCA authors were sure to keep in some truthiness.  It is still a con, as Glenn has explained:

While the bill doesn’t expressly ban secret ballot elections, it has the same practical effect.  Section 2(a) of the Card Check legislation states that once union authorization cards are signed by more than 50% of workers in a bargaining unit, the National Labor Relations Board "shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative."

In other words, it would be illegal to have a secret ballot election once the union gathers the necessary signature cards...The actual "option" unions mention lies not in the hands of the workers, but in the hands of union organizers.  When they have collected more than 30% of signature cards they could ask for a secret ballot election.  This of course, will never happen.  No union asks for an election until they are well above the 50% threshold (usually 70% to 80%) because they know many people who signed cards did so to get organizers off their backs and have no intention of voting for the union.  And, as the bill states, once you have crossed that 50% threshold, it becomes illegal to have an election.

The SEIU does, perhaps accidently, give some good advice:

Next time you hear a corporate-funded front group pushing this lie, tell them to read the Wall Street Journal to get the facts.

All I can say is: YES! YES! THEY ARE THE FACTS!  Please, oh please, oh please, spread these words from the WSJ loud and wide, with extra timbre on the bolded parts.

Less than 8% of private sector workers today belong to unions, a number that has been falling for decades. Labor groups claim that membership is down because companies sack pro-union employees and threaten to shut down if workers organize. But the National Labor Relations Board, which fields these complaints, rejects almost all of the allegations after inspection. In 2005, for example, the NLRB found evidence of illegal firings in only 2.7% of the organizing election campaigns that took place that year.

Andy Stern, who heads the SEIU, has said he expects union membership to grow by at least a million within the first year of the measure's passage. That could translate into billions of dollars in mandatory dues revenue. So it's no wonder that activists have resorted to exploiting tragedies to gin up votes.
...
This is Big Labor's fourth attempt to pass card check since 2003, and with mostly sympathetic Democrats now running Congress and the White House, they're getting mean. But it's encouraging to see responsible Democrats like Mr. Boren question the wisdom of a measure that will discourage hiring and make businesses less competitive. We hope Democrats who are currently on the fence stand by him, even if it means they could also soon be on the receiving end of a nasty attack.