This letter is in response to Rep Brown's press release concerning card check's passage in the state House of Representatives.

Open Letter to Rep Mike Brown:

Thank you for your response and correcting my wording, but your press release was short on facts and long on personal attacks. While it may have been an inadvertent mistake on my part to say "unanimously passed" when I meant to say "overwhelmingly passed," it does not change the fact that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) actually works against workers by taking away their right to a secret ballot, which would allow them to vote free from union and employer coercion.

Card check is unfair to workers, period. Your vote, Representative, should never be secret since it potentially affects us all, but an individual must always have the right to vote free from harassment and intimidation. Why should any worker be forced to tell anyone why or what they are voting on if it pertains to their welfare. Furthermore, this bill puts no time limit on collecting signatures and places no off-limit locations while collecting these signatures. Your home, your work, your leisure time are all potential signature collecting areas. The potential for harassment and corruption is strong, which is why the secret ballot was instituted in the first place. Please see the YouTube clip below. It says more than I ever could on this issue.

The obvious attempt to pull the wool over people's eyes by calling this bill the "Employee Free Choice Act" is not only insincere but deceptive. A bill that strips power away from from the employee by removing their right to a secret ballot is both unconstitutional and unconscionable. I propose we call this bill for what it is: The Employee "No" Choice Act.

The card-check procedure presents a risk that workers, stripped of privacy protections, may be compelled to accept unions that they don’t want. The public opposes the bill by overwhelming margins, over 80 percent in most polls, and even union members oppose the bill by strong majorities. By forcing workers into unions that are aggressively anti-business, the bill could cause severe job losses and economic damage to Oklahoma. Besides, if unions were so great and generated prosperity as you have indicated, why isn't Detroit the richest city in America?

The second aspect, and most egregious, is the mandatory arbitration that would ensue if the “union” and the employer couldn’t come to an agreement in 120 days. This “arbitrator” would be a government bureaucrat appointed by the Obama administration to ensure that “the best agreement is met”. Given that Democratic legislatures and administrations typically favor card check, the subsequent uphill battle could threaten our individual liberties that free and fair elections are supposedly grounded in. The Employee Free Choice Act completely disregards and, moreover, violates the voting process our country is renowned for. The loss of the secret ballot and subsequent use of mandatory arbitration by a government bureaucrat is not only a destroyer of small business but unfair to the owner of the company. How can any company survive when rules such as these are forced upon them?

Thankfully, both the state Senate and House have passed this joint resolution (JCR 8) opposing EFCA. Oklahoma now joins around 20 other states in sending a clear message to congress that Oklahomans prefer to keep their ballots secret and government out of our businesses.

These are the facts, and quoting President John Adams, "Facts are stubborn things."