Whole Foods vs. Unions  | Mon Mar. 23, 2009 5:25 PM GMT  In
what's being euphemistically dubbed the 'third way', the CEOs of
Whole Foods, Costco, and Starbucks have joined together to lay
out a 'compromise' to the management/labor stand-off over the
Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). At issue is whether employees
interested in forming a union would be allowed to choose their
union formation process. Current law lets companies insist upon
a secret-ballot election, even when employees would prefer a
majority sign-up method.  I'm not going to restate the merits of
labor's position (you can read about it here and here) but
surely we can agree that employees should be able to choose how
they decide to form a union, right? Well, Whole Foods CEO John
Mackey thinks it's un-American.  Advertise on MotherJones.com
Mackey said that binding arbitration is "not the way we normally
do things in the United States" and that allowing workers to
organize without a secret ballot "violates a bedrock principle
of American democrac