Numbers Don’t Lie, But Card Check Proponents Come Close
Friday, April 10th, 2009 by AdminWriting this morning in the San Francisco Chronicle, Pacific Research Institute director of research Jason Clemens takes a look at the cold, hard facts on the current system by which employees can choose to join — or not join — a union. Here’s what he finds:
An examination of the NLRB data indicates that over a three-year period the likelihood of an improper firing by an employer during a union drive was 2.7 percent. This is a far cry from the 25 percent figure cited by unions.
Similarly, NLRB data shows a fairly successful ability to hold union votes in a reasonable amount of time. For example, in 2007, 93.9 percent of all elections were completed within 56 days of filing. The notion that employers drag out elections for years is simply not supported by the NLRB data.
His conclusion:
The ongoing debate about the Employee Free Choice Act and labor reform should include more evidence and less rhetoric. The empirical evidence clearly shows that laws such as card check harm investment, curtail job creation and increase unemployment. These are not remedies for what ails the U.S. economy, and indeed would make things much worse.
Yet proponents of the Employee Free Choice Act continue to push the bill’s untenable card check and binding arbitration provisions, usually resorting to:
- The kinds of myths cited by Clemens
- Disgusting stereotypes of business owners as brutes, bullies, and greedy manipulators
- Outright misleading statements about the bill’s effective elimination of secret ballots while calling EFCA opponents liars
It’s the final of those points that might be the most alarming. Serious and well-intentioned people can disagree on policy issues, but it is actually fairly rare — and very galling — to call one’s opponent a “liar” while resting one’s hopes on a foundation of half-truths and mis-truths.
Tags: Lies, Protecting Secret Ballots
