Legal Commentary

You may remember Vincent Curatola from "The Sopranos" -- he played a rival boss to Tony who suffered the indignity of attending his daughter's wedding in federal custody.  Now, Mr. Curtola is still living off his Sopranos fame by portraying a mobster.  Well, at least he seems to be a mobster.  Watch the video and judge for yourself.

Problem is, Mr. Curatola is also portraying a union leader.  The gist of the ad, sponsored by the innocently named "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace," is that workers will be threatened and intimidated by mobbed-up union bosses if Congress passes card-check legislation.  Mickey Kaus is a big fan of the ad, posting that it "seemed effective to me, but I'm pre-convinced."  But to me, the ad is an absurd caricature of unions and their leaders.  Frankly, I find it offensive.

I've posted before about the Employee Free Choice Act -- the legislation that would require employers to recognize a union if a majority of employees fill out cards attesting to that desire.  Providing a statutory mechanism for unions to be recognized through card-check would put unions on the same playing field as other service providers.  The current system of the NLRB secret-ballot elections allows employers to initimidate their workers through captive-audience speeches and predictions about a dire future.  (Employers are, as Catherine Fisk memorably put it, the "anti-seller" in this market.)  There is a lot if research out there about the effects of this employer intimidation.  The scholarly literature has much less discussion of union intimidation, particularly mob-related intimidation.  This is not to deny that the mafia has had control over certain unions.  But there is little evidence that mob bosses would use card-check certification to expand their reach. 

There is room for concern about union intimidation.  As I have written, there is also room for concern that employees are not getting the information they need in the course of a representation campaign.  A recent essay by Sen Arlen Specter and Eric Nguyen provides some hope that compromise legislation is possible here.  But the efforts to reach a sensible solution will be harmed, not helped, by ads such as the one above.