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

Our friends over at the Chamber of Commerce and Chamberpost.com have a powerful image:

Does this mean good things? Is it a sign that we can finally put away — like these banners — the threat of the Employee Free Choice Act and with it the assault on small business, jobs, and the economy?

Chamberpost reports, nay:

A second banner just around the corner was taken down as well. But now the bad news. BNA reports today that the AFL-CIO is “not backing away” from EFCA. So removing the issue from public view might not indicate surrender, but merely that a decision has been made by the AFL-CIO to bypass a public debate on card check in Congress to try and slip it through the back door.

Some new items to keep you up to date:

• Card Check called a “lie”: Card Check is Obama’s un-American bill designed to steal away the right of a secret ballot when it comes to joining a union or not. Laughingly described by the Obama crowd as: “Employee free choice act”, this cowardly bill puts union goons directly in the path of free speech and free choice.
• Union-front group study: We swear, binding interest arbitration won’t kill business! (But if it didn’t harm business at the expense of labor union officials, why would it be included in their top legislative priority? — ed)
• Media Matters complains, but kindly offers video, of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly highlighting concerns with newly appointed National Labor Relations Board member Craig Becker

For a while it looked like the issue of card check was fading, though that seems to have (at least temporarily) reversed and the issue is hot again.

Thank goodness for the ardent defense of workplace democracy being demonstrated by the AFL-CIO, whose president writes:

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that shouldn’t even have to exist.

The question in New Process Steel v. National Labor Relations Board is whether decisions by the NLRB-the body created under the National Labor Relations Act to protect workplace democracy-are valid when the board has only two of the five members provided for in the act.

Hmm. Notice that part, “protect workplace democracy”? Interesting.

All this time we were worried that union bosses had forgotten about workplace democracy. After all, they’ve been pushing the card check bill, which would effectively eliminate secret ballot elections from the workplace and threaten an employee’s right to vote on an eventual contract proposal.

And SEIU has faced allegations by union rivals of subverting democracy for their own members of changing ballots, showing up at workers’ homes as many as five times a day to pressure them to vote for SEIU, questioning the legal status of one worker, and threatening the wages and benefits of a worker if they voted the wrong way.

Glad we’ve cleared up where they stand on workers’ rights.

UPDATE: Shopfloor’s Keith Smith writes: “It’s humorous to see the AFL-CIO calling for a recess appointment in such strong terms when, in 2006, the union’s leader was so adamantly opposed to using a recess appointment to fill a vacant seat at the NLRB.”

We have documented the way in which NLRB nominee Craig Becker’s testimony has failed to assuage the concerns that the former SEIU attorney’s anti-employer views would impair his ability to function in his potential new role.

But there’s also the concern that his mild-mannered answers — which could have left many thinking he has changed his view that he could use the NLRB to replace the current secret-ballot system with card check — didn’t tell the whole story.

LaborUnionReport.com points out this claim by AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka organizing boss Stewart Acuff on using the NLRB to pass card check when legislators would not:

It [sic] we aren’t able to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing forming a union through administrative action to once again allow workers in America access to one of the most basic freedoms in a democracy–the freedom of speech and assembly and association so that workers can build the collective power to challenge the Financial Elite and Get America Back to Work. [Emphasis added.]

Hmm. Certainly worth keeping in mind as Senators send his nomination one more important step into the process Thursday morning.

Card check, and its legislative embodiment, the smirkingly named Employee Free Choice Act, continues to be the point of debate. Some think the issue is dead, while others say it is a done deal. Whom to believe, then?

Tough to say, so here are some items that can act as food for thought.

One advocate of organized labor says card check is dead, and that labor needs a new survival plan. EFCA, of course, was the primary survival plan meant to push employees into unions without getting the right to vote on the union and potentially not even vote on contract terms that govern their work lives.

AFL-CIO honcho Richard Truma says card check will pass in 2010. His rather rosy economic view — we don’t believe he’s an economist — includes this prediction:

“The Employee Free Choice Act, John, is not just good for unions; it’s good for the economy because it will bring more money into people’s pockets across the board, so that everybody can spend a little more and create an economy that really does work for everybody…And that’s where we’re going to go to.”

Economists have an entirely different prediction, of course, and that would be that EFCA would kill hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of jobs. So “everybody can spend a little more” if they aren’t one of those millions.

The prediction is interesting for another reason: a report for the AFL-CIO is already blaming union members for the death of card check. That seems like a pretty petty way of losing, but we’ve noted before that union members and union households oppose EFCA.

Meanwhile, some are still fighting absurd battles. Media Matters for America is still claiming EFCA wouldn’t strip the right to a secret ballot for working Americans. We’ve explained that canard again and again, but Media Matters either chooses to mislead readers or simply can’t read themselves.

What does this all mean? Some people are still fighting old battles about what EFCA is or isn’t, others are fighting to try to make it law, some are saying its dead, some are blaming their own members for killing it, and the majority legislative party in the United States refuses to simply kill the bill and focus on jobs.

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) 2009 National Chairman Jerry Gorski, president of Gorski Engineering, Collegeville, Pa., today issued the following statement in reaction to news that the AFL-CIO will support Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s 2010 reelection campaign if he votes for the Employee Free Choice Act (S. 560):

“It is difficult to believe that union bosses in Washington think they are able to buy a vote in support of the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. This is a desperate attempt on their part to try and shove this legislation onto the American public,” said Gorski.

“Unfortunately, what the AFL-CIO fails to realize is that neither Senator Specter’s nor any other member of Congress’ vote is for sale,” added Gorski.

“It is surprising in this era of change that anyone would be brazen enough to suggest a quid pro quo such as this,” said Gorski.

“A new report shows that if the Employee Free Choice Act were signed into law, 600,000 Americans would be out of work in the first year alone,” added Gorski. “The President and this Congress could serve the country much better by working to create more jobs and fixing the economy.”