Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota was never a darling of the conservatives. So to say he is right would be politically incorrect; however, his assessments of problems with frivolous lawsuits and union organizing are correct.

McGovern is a self-professed liberal anti-war activist who actively opposed the Vietnam War. True to form, he was against the Iraq War and called for President Bush’s impeachment.

He lost the 1972 Presidential election to Richard Nixon by a landslide but hasn’t shied away from levying criticism. McGovern is a World War II B-24 pilot who flew 35 combat missions over North Africa and Europe and independently speaks his mind, sometimes to the chagrin of his traditional allies.

In the late 1980s, McGovern departed from his traditional Democrat base and supported legal reforms which annoyed personal injury lawyers. McGovern bought a small New England country inn after retiring from the U.S. Senate and soon after got whacked by a number of "slip-and-fall" frivolous lawsuits. High litigation costs were a key factor when he sold the inn.

In the mid-1990s, he spoke at the winter meeting of the Association of Washington Business saying that unwarranted litigation hurts working people and costs America millions of jobs and lost opportunities. He believes fear of being sued is endangering our nation’s competitiveness and stemming innovation. McGovern, like many World War II veterans, believes American ingenuity was a key to winning the war in Europe and the Pacific.

McGovern joined with fellow Democrat presidential candidate Bill Bradley and Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, Howard Baker and Alan Simpson to form Common Good, an organization dedicated to restoring balance in our legal system. They simply wanted to make sure that monetary awards go to legitimate victims rather than those who abuse the legal system.

Now, McGovern is irritating his union friends, saying that eliminating the secret ballot election in the workplace is simply wrong. Recently, McGovern wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in which he pointed out that voting is an immense privilege. He is concerned that the union’s latest organizing tactic could deny many Americans in the workplace that very right.

The so-called "Employee Free Choice Act" replaces the secret ballot election with an open card check system where union organizers can circulate cards among workers, ask them to sign the cards allowing unions to organize, and watch over them while they decide whether or not to sign the organizing cards.

Instead of a private election overseen by an impartial federal board, union organizers would simply need to gather signatures from more than 50 percent of the employees in a workplace or bargaining unit, a system known as "Card Check."

McGovern wrote, “The key provision of EFCA is a change in the mechanism by which unions are formed and recognized. There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.”

Right now, union leaders can't get by President Bush, who would veto EFCA, and can't muster the 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to stop a filibuster by Republicans. In 2008, the elections for union leaders are as much about getting 60 Democrats elected in the U.S. Senate to invoke cloture and block a filibuster of the EFCA as they are about getting Barack Obama elected president.

“That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans,” wrote McGovern. “As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor. I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.”

Sen. McGovern is correct.