Memo To John Sweeney: Get A Better Pollster

Union bosses have been cooking the books. As they attempt to end secret ballot elections for employees deciding whether to join a union, labor chiefs claim to have a groundswell of support. The real numbers tell a different story.

The AFL-CIO commissioned a study – which they won’t release – claiming that 60 million Americans want a union. But prestigious polls, including questions originally crafted on behalf of the AFL-CIO and recently commissioned by the Center for Union Facts – suggest most Americans don’t want to join a union and they don’t want union bosses stealing their right to a personal, private vote. Consider:

• Fully 74% of non-union workers say they would not “personally like to be a member of a labor union.”
  — Zogby International poll, August 2006
• 64% of workers say they would prefer their present job to be non-union.
  — Opinion Research Corporation Poll, March 2007
  
• 78% of Americans prefer secret ballots for union organizing.
  — Opinion Research Corporation Poll, March 2007
  
• 87% agree that “every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union.”
  — McLaughlin and Associates, January 2007