An example of how card check certification has hindered Canadian businesses and their employees.

 
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or card check legislation, would harm investment, curtail job creation, and increase unemployment, especially among America's small businesses, according to Canadian business leaders and lawyers who say their country's experiment with card check has failed miserably.
 
After having tried both card check and private ballot elections for union organizing campaigns, Canadian provinces are now moving away from card check laws as their unemployment rates have increased, job creation has stalled, and productivity has declined, according to John Raudabaugh, a partner at Baker and McKenzie law firm. Raudabaugh spoke at a July 7 U.S. Chamber event examining Canada's experience with card check.

The United States should learn from Canada's experience, said Randy Johnson, senior vice president of Labor, Immigration and Employee Benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We don't want to follow the Canadians' lead when it comes to labor law."

Norman Cote, director of employee relations at Bank of Montreal, gave an account of how card check and binding interest arbitration negatively affected his industry. Cote mentioned that a competitor, National Bank, faced salary increases of 25% after the government arbitrator imposed a first contract, causing the bank to close down what had been a profitable division a year later. (Click on the video to see another example of how card check certification has hindered Canadian businesses and their employees.)

Small businesses in particular would be disproportionately affected by EFCA because they have fewer resources to fight off big labor unions before and after the organizing drive, according to John Mortimer, president of Canadian Labour Watch. Though the Canadian government pays for arbitrators to establish a first contract, small businesses have to pay for their representation and experts if they wish to challenge the arbitrator's contract, Mortimer noted.

And though government arbitration is supposed to speed up contract negotiations, the Canadian experience suggests otherwise. There, it takes 24 to 36 weeks to finalize a contract, according to Ted Goloff of the Robinson, Sheppard, Shapiro law firm. "It's costly in terms of time and money," he said.

Some card check supporters in the United States are discussing legislative compromises, including requiring expedited secret ballot elections in lieu of a card check process. However, Canada's experience with an expedited election process–most provinces require elections within 5 to 10 days of a union petition–shows that small businesses often don't have the information they need to launch a counter-campaign in such a compressed timeframe or the infrastructure in place to quickly make their case to employees as to why a union would not benefit them, according to panelists at the Chamber event.

Any compromise, according to Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), should be a non-starter. "Any semblance of this current bill will be disastrous," he told the Chamber audience. Price asked Chamber members to rally their small business colleagues against card check and urge their members of Congress, particularly their senators, to oppose the bill.