If you’re a labor union and you lose 40 percent of the elections in which workers vote whether or not to have you represent them, and further, if you find it relatively easy to get unorganized workers to sign cards saying they want you to represent them, especially when you stand right over them and watch them sign, what do you do?

The answer is obvious: You promote a federal law to forbid elections and to accept signed cards instead.

And what do you name the proposed law? That’s easy too. You don’t name it the “Election Suppression Act,” or, the “Strong-Arm Sign-Up Act.” You name it the “Employee Free Choice Act,” as any student of George Orwell could tell you.

And in fact there is such an act hanging fire in the Congress of the United States, where it’s also known as HR 800. It requires an employer to recognize a union as the legitimate bargaining agent of its employees if a majority of those workers sign cards that are handed to them by union organizers, and it would forbid the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election to see if that’s what the employees really want, as is done now.

Who would possibly support such a bill? That’s easy too: Democrats, by and large, including Barack Obama on the national stage, and the various Democratic candidates for Congress on the local stage – Paul Tonko, Phil Steck, and Tracey Brooks, as well as current Congresswoman, Kirsten Gillibrand.

Why? Because the big unions want them too, that’s all. It would increase their power. Big unions are as fundamental to the Democratic voting base as oil companies and born-again Christians are to the Republican voting base, and when they say dance, Democratic candidates know enough to dance.

You can read more about this intriguing subject in my column in the Sunday Gazette, which I hope you will not hesitate to buy.