If you can’t beat ‘em, sneak it through the back door at the 11th hour when the world has rejected you and your agenda.

That’s the potential scenario envisioned by The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who is doing great reporting to highlight these statements by leading Democratic politicians:

In the House, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters last month that for bills like “card check”—the measure to curb secret-ballot union elections—”the lame duck would be the last chance, quite honestly, for the foreseeable future.”

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate committee overseeing labor issues, told the Bill Press radio show in June that “to those who think [card check] is dead, I say think again.” He told Mr. Press “we’re still trying to maneuver” a way to pass some parts of the bill before the next Congress is sworn in.

Let’s see … “trying to maneuver” a way to pass an unfair, anti-democratic, anti-employer, anti-speech, job-killing law when everyone thinks the world has moved onto a new agenda.

That’s the very definition of lame.

Photo credit: flickr/tifotter

For a seemingly endless time we have been discussing the ways in which some politicians want to avoid the issue of card check (because their support for such an ill-conceived and unfair plan would be highly unpopular) while others are happy to bring it up (because their opposition matches the opinion of the vast majority of Americans).

The latest evidence comes from sunny Florida, where Senatorial candidate Marco Rubio discussed card check on Fox Business. Transcript here –

SULLIVAN: We have seen some victories. Health care obviously comes to mind. What do you think the unions want now? What is their big agenda? Is it maybe reinvigorating card check?

RUBIO: Oh, absolutely. I think that’s the Holy Grail of the labor unions, is card check, which would be devastating to America’s economy.

There’s already so much uncertainty surrounding America’s economic future. The job creators lack confidence in our future. They see all the rhetoric and the policies coming out of Washington are anti- entrepreneurial, anti free-enterprise. And so they’re not creating jobs.

He’s right … about so much, but in particular card check being the Holy Grail for union bosses. It’s important here to distinguish, as always, between union bosses who want card check and rank and file workers who don’t support the unfair plan.

Photo credit: Orlando Sentinel

In other words, only those airline and railway workers who choose to vote on whether they want to organize a union will make that decision. One does not have to be an authority on union organizing to guess that this change of rules makes it much easier for labor leaders to expand union membership, thus enhancing their powers.

“It’s ‘mini card check,’ pure and simple,” one expert on labor issues from the business side (who requested anonymity) told me, likening the NMB decision to labor’s much-sought provision in the Employee Free Choice Act that severely waters down the secret ballot in union election. “This is a blatantly political and, like ‘card check,’ it tips the process of union elections to the labor bosses.”

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would strip a worker’s fundamental American right to a federally supervised secret-ballot election when deciding whether to join a labor union and replace it with a “card check” system. This would leave the worker vulnerable to coercion and harassment by union officials. EFCA could also force workers and businesses into binding wage and benefit contracts. These contracts would be set by a government bureaucrat with no required knowledge of the industry and would be binding for two years. Studies have shown that if EFCA became law, 600,000 jobs would be lost in the first year alone.

Entire article here.

The Governor was to be commended for vetoing the bill last time because card check is just plain bad.

Then again, unions in California aren’t known for being great on the economic outlook:

At the request of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the National Labor Relations Board’s inspector general has launched an investigation on whether Member Craig Becker should have recused himself in a case involving St. Barnabas Hospital and Local 1957 of the Service Employees International Union.

… and …

In a June 15 letter to the inspector general, Issa formally requested that Berry investigate whether Becker’s participation in the unfair labor practice case against St. Barnabas “violated his ethics pledge or any other relevant conflict of interest provision.”

Muy interesante.

That means, when people have been booted out of office they can still do a heck of a number on the economy.

Speaking of which …

The new head of the United Auto Workers — those wascally wabits who have done more than their fair share to put the brakes on the domestic auto companies they unionized and helped drive to Bailoutville — he’s not waiting around for the Employee Free Choice Act to try to repeat the union’s record at primarily non-union Toyota. He said “We’re going to pound on Toyota until they recognize the First Amendment right to come into the UAW” …

And what of the First Amendment right to not associate with others upon one’s own choice, especially in the case when a “card check” process may not be the best way of figuring out what the majority prefers?