State anti-EFCA measures

Four states (Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah) passed provisions requiring secret ballot elections to determine a union's majority status. First, it is extraordinarily unlikely the NLRB will abandon secret ballot elections, so any petition would be processed under the current, long-standing secret ballot election procedures used by the NLRB. As for voluntary recognition situations, under which employers and unions may by-pass the election process, the effect is less certain, but absent a major rethinking of federal preemption, I do not see how states can permissibly regulate the process of determining majority status by card check or other non-election evidence that a majority of the employees support unionization.