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

Armand Thiebolt has some strong thoughts on trade unions and the Obama administration, highlighting the problem of the Employee Free Choice Act to lead off his thoughts.

Be sure to check it out.

Those wascally wabits at the euphemistically named “American Rights At Work” labor front group are continuing in their mission to obfuscate about the effect of the equally euphemistic “Employee Free Choice Act.” In a letter, a spokesman claims: “The bill simply allows workers, not their bosses, to choose how they want to form a union.” Riiiight. Unless one has actually read the bill.

Elsewhere, more informed readers offer their own opinions. In the Tennessean, Todd Malone writes: “Facetiously speaking here, maybe we should urge our lawmakers to propose a bill called the Voters Free Choice Act. We could apply it to all elections. Our votes for public office and policy would be made known to everyone.”

One gentleman offers his decades of experience and concludes EFCA would be detrimental to workers:

As a member of the engineering staff, I was an interested spectator on four occasions when such organizing drives were undertaken at my place of employment. In each case, well more than a majority of all employees signed up as wanting to join the union in Step 1.

But, in the secret balloting, the unionization drive was soundly defeated. Four times.

The only way to determine the true feelings of those voting is by secret ballot. It is their right. And it must be preserved.

Republicans from Carson, Nevada are making no bones about their opposition to card check: “We support the right to work in Nevada, oppose card check in any form; if card check passes in Congress, we demand that the governor and legislators join in any legal opposition to card check legislation..”

And one guys has several salient facts to consider:

Union membership should be voluntary, not forced. Union bosses spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect this president and Congress, and they are demanding payback. The president has frequent visits by union big shots such as Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, who has his sights on nurses and doctors as a prime target, if President Barack Obama’s health care law is passed. Private-sector unions lost about 10 percent of their membership last year. Some of these people would not put up with the radical political agenda Big Labor exposes.

The Birmingham News has a great take on union density figures and the need for card check in that an increase in the former means a decrease in the rationale for the latter.

The News says the argument for EFCA is undercut:

Back to Alabama, where instead of union membership declining, membership is increasing, even as unemployment continues to rise. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership climbed by 10,000 workers in 2009, to a total of 181,000. The number of state residents represented by unions (they’re covered by union contracts but are not official union members) rose to 212,000, or 12 percent of all state workers.

Alabama’s percentage of union workers is more than double border states Tennessee (5.1 percent), Mississippi (4.8 percent) and Georgia (4.6 percent). Alabama’s story doesn’t help the unions make their case.
With Congress expected to become more Republican after this year’s elections, union leaders know they’re running out of time on this lousy card-check idea.

Exactly.

Perhaps you haven’t heard, but two more former ACORN employees have been charged with voter fraud for their small part in the large rash of voter registration “irregularities.” ACORN is going so far as to say it’s a “victimless crime.” M’kay.

Such a blase attitude may be warranted if the cards were something as unimportant as a supermarket discount card, a nice coupon for half off the second entree at the local Mexican restaurant, maybe even a library card. But a voter registration card? Voting is the cornerstone of participatory democracy, and that card is the key to getting in — it’s the ultimate franchise.

So it’s interesting to note ACORN sibling SEIU’s view of the cards that are the key to the labor realm — union authorization cards that would be the one-stop sign-up for dues, work rules, failing pensions, fines, strikes, and more. While most Americans are outraged unions would try to form without letting people vote, SEIU says the card will take care of it. No need to offer the protection of a secret ballot vote, nothing to see here, move along folks.

Of course, there’s plenty of allegations to suggest that SEIU doesn’t really value the secret ballots of its own members, so perhaps cards really aren’t the answer to any problem. Perhaps SEIU isn’t worried about process, but just outcome. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is usually bad for employees.

Just something to think about.

Over at NPR sits an interesting argument: The president can have a “hinge” moment “to do something he hasn’t done particularly well during his first year in office: successfully defy his opponents and, at the same time, reassure his most loyal supporters.”

The way he can achieve such a political victory? Force through the installation of the Card Check King, otherwise known as National Labor Relations Board nominee — and SEIU and AFL-CIO lawyer — Craig Becker.

Unfortunately for employers, employees, and everyone else, Becker is off the wall. Those aren’t our words, they’re the words of a top Senator, Orrin Hatch.

So, we ask: Would winning a Becker battle be a “hinge” moment or a “fringe” moment? We think the facts speak for themselves, but ask yourself one final question: If Becker weren’t so far outside the mainstream and so dedicated to decreasing employer and employee speech at the expense of union power, would the powerful SEIU rest so many of its hopes on him?

Mark Tapscott writes:

Big Labor is covering its bets against the likelihood that President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress won’t be able to deliver Card Check to kill the secret ballot in workplace representation elections. The sidebet is at the three-member National Mediation Board.

Never heard of it? Well, the NMB was established by FDR during the New Deal to mediate labor-management disputes in the railroad industry, then had its regulatory purview expanded to include the airline industry. The NMB has the power to impose compulsory arbitration when labor and management are unable to reach a settlement within 30 days.

Two of the three members now on the NMB are former union officials, Harry Hoglander and Linda Puchala, who came to the board from, respectively, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) unions. President Obama appointed Puchala.

Certainly something to keep an eye on.