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

• Getting litmus testy in Arkansas: Politico reports, “Sen. Blanche Lincoln said Wednesday she would not agree to a fourth debate with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter until he takes a clear position on controversial card check legislation.” Local columnist Brummett says, “Ask him in a debate, senator.”
• More litmus test: It’s card check and education for unions in Florida
• FYI: Judge upholds secret ballot measure for SD ballot

Given the ebbs and flows of news related to the horrifically misnamed Employee Free Choice Act and its apparent waning in likelihood of passage on Capitol Hill, we awoke this morning to find a decent group of mentions of card check going around.

Here are a couple worth checking out:

• Unions Toll Bell for Card Check
• Coloradans join U.S. Chamber’s bid to sink union-organizing bill
• Unions Regroup After Stunned by Losses Under Obama, Democrats

As we’ve said before, this issue refuses to go away completely, which means attention can’t be diverted from it completely.

Two brief bits of news for you this fine morning.

First, in Nevada, “Group plans petitions on secret ballots, paycheck deductions.”

Meanwhile, “Fearing lack of support, communications union bosses are attempting to rig election employees initiated to throw out unwanted union.”

It never ends, does it?

Truly important news regarding the grotesquely misnamed Employee Free Choice Act has been sparse recently, leaving any number of groups and outlets to chitter-chatter away about any gossip that goes through the mill. Herein the latest recap:

• NY-23: Scozzafava Flip-Flops on Card Check
• Senator Feinstein Opposes Employee Free Choice Act
• Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) Reiterates Opposition to Employee Free Choice Act

While national union leadership is sure to send this guy a quiet message to stay in line, the Boston Globe carries an important story about the exhausted hope labor officials have for Democrats in Washington, D.C.:

“It’s beyond belief to me,’’ said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. While Obama and Congress inherited “a big mess’’ from Bush, Haynes said, “there aren’t any excuses anymore. If you can’t deliver health care, and you can’t deliver jobs, and if you can’t deliver [card check legislation], and you can’t figure out how to take care of the working people of this great city and country, you don’t deserve to stay in office.’’

It will be interesting to see if labor thinks it’s bigger than President Obama and if they can call in their chits to push through health care and card check. The rub for Democrats is the harder they push for a union-only agenda that comes at the expense of the rest of American workers, the less likely Democrats are to stay in power.

Stay tuned.

ABC’s own member company Miller and Long’s Brett McMahon is quoted in a great story that recaps that union-payoff angle to the Employee Free Choice Act fight:

Labor groups spent around $450 million on the 2008 election, almost exclusively for pro-union Democrats, and to great success. A Democratic Congress could help expand union rolls through the “card check” provision in the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which removes the secret ballot in union elections. That provision has hit a bump in the Senate, however, and may not appear in a final version of the labor reform bill, which Obama has promised to help pass.

As it stands now, EFCA allows the government to inject itself into certain labor disputes further through binding interest arbitration—a remedy where a government arbitrator oversees talks and imposes a contract at the end, to which employers must agree because the talks are “binding”—a puzzling arrangement to employers because they are the only ones in the talks who must meet a bottom line.

Rian Wathen, a former union organizer who now works with employers to campaign against unions, said unions will have the incentive to “ask for the moon.”

According to McMahon, Miller & Long would have to assume $50 million to $70 million in liability on its books to guard against risks of binding interest arbitration. “The only business decision you have at that point is to close,” he said. “Our financing would disappear, rightfully.”

McMahon finds it hard to believe that the government could find a solution that neither management nor the union could arrive at on its own. “If there was some magic man out there who could write a contract for our employees that made us more profitable and efficient, I’m pretty sure I would have hired him already. That’s what we do,” he said.