Big labor has made some mistakes in its frenzy to get politicians to support card check, and that may be what’s behind the renewed effort to get card check in front of Congress before adjournment. Labor targeted Arkansas U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln because Lincoln, a moderate Democrat, opposed card check. She defeated the labor candidate in the June 8 primary, and she’s not likely to be a friend to unions now if she wins in November.

With unions continuing to lose membership, they should be investigating what they’re doing wrong instead of trying to change the rules so drastically that they get an unfair advantage.

Union chiefs prefer the power that comes with managing huge pension investments—even if they’re failing. They are now counting on Mr. Casey to preserve their power by making taxpayers pick up the tab for years of pension mismanagement. With the union priority of “card check” stalled, word is that the Casey bailout is Big Labor’s consolation prize. Taxpayers should let Congress know they don’t want to pay.

It’s not always joyful to be right. In this case, it’s just plain sad.

… Trumka and Big Labor aren’t giving up, they’re just switching strategies. The new plan is to attach card check to another, must-pass bill before the November elections, which look likely to send legions of new Republicans to Washington who will vote against the proposal. Thus Trumka told the Hill: “Anything we can get it attached to, there are multitudes of things we can get it attached to, and we will. We will get it done and it will be a good thing for the country.”

No, passage of card check would benefit only union bosses like Trumka, who heads an organization that once stood atop a labor movement that represented one of every three American workers. But today only 7 percent of all private-sector employees belong to unions. That’s why the labor bosses are determined to stamp out secret ballots in the workplace when employees vote on whether to join a union. It’s so much easier for union thugs to intimidate employees when everybody knows how everybody else is voting.

Good points, which is why we return to cinema for our favorite explanation of this issue.

That leads the chatter around the blogosphere.

The Daily Caller reported it as “Obama rewards unions with key labor appointee,” while noting all 41 Republican Senators sent a letter to the president urging him not to move forward with Becker’s recess appointment. The wording left nothing to the imagination, saying Obama gave “organized labor a big payback for its help in pushing his health-care reform across the finish line, unilaterally appointing a controversial pro-union attorney…”

Investors Business Daily reflects on the stakes involved and turns to the words of the AFL-CIO’s own Stewart Acuff, “If 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.”

Elsewhere, Chris Stirewalt of the Washington Examiner writes: “Now that Obamacare is the law of the land, Democrats promise to take on global warming, card check, immigration and a regulatory crackdown on banks.”

The Greenville News has this opinion, which we find it hard to imagine would have very many detractors:

Workers in South Carolina — and around the country, for that matter — deserve the right to decide these important issues behind the protective cloak of the secret ballot. Although all American workers should have the ability to form a labor union, no worker should feel intimidated when making this decision. And the federal government should not strip away workers’ rights to a secret ballot.

That seems pretty fundamental to us, but then again a lot of things seem to have gone haywire lately.

Good to keep this material on peoples’ minds.

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 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.

The paper’s advice to Big Labor:

Union membership in the private sector fell 10 percent during Mr. Obama’s first year in office, to a historic low of 7.2 percent. A poll last month from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 41 percent of those surveyed now have a favorable view of unions, compared with 58 percent in a similar survey in 2007.

It’s up to them, of course, but maybe the AFL-CIO should simply announce it’s going to work next fall for the party that has the best plan to cut government spending, cut taxes and thus allow private employers to create new jobs. Because a change of course seems advisable. And dumping the radical, far-left agenda — which the rank and file have never considered a hill to die for — might be a start.

That would be good advice, but we’re quite confident Big Labor is going in the wrong direction. It is pushing PLA’s, Davis-Bacon Act red tape, and now the unfortunately named “high road” contracting requirements that are the biggest threat to efficient government spending we’ve seen in ages.

The legislation, which failed in Congress in 2007, was a priority a year ago for the young administration. But the public didn’t like it, and neither did a few Democratic senators. It appeared to be dead.

In reality, though, it’s merely wounded. The unions want card check to be part of a federal jobs bill. Another reason to kill legislation that won’t create or save any meaningful private-sector jobs.

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus once said of card check legislation: “This is how a civilization disappears.” He may be exaggerating a bit. But he’s not far off.

It would certainly be cynical to include jobs-killing language in jobs legislation.

Presidents deserve wide latitude in filling executive branch positions. But given his far-left philosophical leanings, the possibility that Mr. Becker would use the post to help organized labor impose its agenda through the back door without congressional consent is a real concern.

Mr. Becker’s nomination will likely come up as soon as this week. If they stick together, Senate Republicans have the ability to ensure it’s DOA — and that’s precisely what they should do.

Agreed!