The President has promised big labor that after health care reform, he will turn to their top priority … the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This legislation effectively eliminates secret ballot elections and replaces them with publicly signed union cards. But while Obama is promising to deprive workers in the private sector of their right to a secret ballot, his own Administration admirably insists on upholding its own employees right to vote.

The Washington Times reported yesterday that employees of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) will be voting by secret ballot election on unionization later this week. The Obama administration ignored the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers’ (IFPTE) request to use card check and deprive LSC employees a private vote.

EFCA also allows federally appointed arbitrators to write the collective bargaining agreement once unions organize a workplace. Government appointed lawyers would decide how many employees a firm could hire, how much it would pay them, what promotion procedures to use, what benefits to provide, what technology they would use, and most other major business decisions. Every company would become the next GM, with the government writing their business plan for them.

If that sounds like an obviously terrible idea, it is because it is. So terrible that unions will not accept use government imposed settlements to resolve their own internal disputes. When the Service Employees International Union proposed going to binding arbitration with UNITE HERE after its attempted union raid, UNITE-HERE President John Wilhelm curtly responded that: “No International Union would agree to put its future members, its jurisdiction, and assets in the hands of an arbitrator.” The Laborer’s Presidents response to the suggestion that they enter into binding arbitration was unprintable.

EFCA’s supporters want no part of it for themselves. The Obama administration opposes using card-check on its own workers. Unions will not countenance government contracts imposed on themselves. But that is not stopping the AFL-CIO and the President from trying to impose both of these on millions of American workers and businesses in the productive private sector.