thetruthaboutefca.com | The Truth About The Employee Free Choice Act & Card Check

While President Obama has been busy telling labor he supports the Employee Free Choice Act, his administration has been busy making him the latest Democrat to protect private ballots in practice but support a bill that would effectively end them in most workplace union elections.

In an exclusive today, the Washington Times’ Amanda Carpenter reports:

While the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress press to allow private-sector workers to unionize by signing authorization cards instead of voting by secret ballot, the government’s legal-aid program for the poor has declared the so-called “card check” strategy “unreliable” and rejected an effort by some of its own workers to organize that way.

The Legal Services Corp., a congressionally chartered, taxpayer-funded entity, even hired a law firm to rebuff the efforts of workers in its oversight offices to gain union representation by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), forcing the workers to conduct a vote by secret ballot later this week.

The LSC’s decision has prompted concerns on Capitol Hill that the government may be trying to impose a solution on private businesses that its own agencies and panels are reluctant to follow.

Indeed, it’s against the law to use card check for federal agencies:

“They have to go through the secret-ballot election,” said Sarah Whittle Spooner, legal counsel for the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which has jurisdiction over government agencies. “There is no process for voluntarily organizing in the federal sector.”

The president is not the first Democrat to be put in this position. We were encouraged when Sen. Harkin recently endorsed secret ballots for internal Democratic politics.
That’s to say nothing of Big Labor’s own hypocrisy on the matter. Then there was the infamous letter from Democrats, including EFCA House author George Miller, who recommended secret ballots for Mexican workers. There was the case of now-Labor Secretary Solis.

And the list goes on over at Shopfloor.org.

Tags: Democrats, President Obama, Protecting Secret Ballots