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

The good, the bad, and the ugly on the Employee Free Choice Act:

• The Back Story: Employee Free Choice Act
• Employee Free Choice Act puts jobs at risk
• Transcript of Specter interview on card check
• Harkin Optimistic for
  

The Manhattan Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth’s has an important piece over at RealClearMarkets.com about one of the major drivers behind organized labor’s push for the Employee Free Choice Act. She explains:

Union pension funds can only survive through new contributions. That

Sen. Mark Pryor was one of the first Democrats to signal misgivings about the Employee Free Choice Act. It turns out there’s reason for him to be concerned (beyond the policy nightmare that would take away secret ballots and impose government arbitrators). A new poll shows that 65 percent of those in Arkansas oppose EFCA — including 52 percent who say they “strongly oppose” the bill. Also noteworthy: 74 percent of Independents oppose the bill.

Union officials have scraped together 47 “stars” pushing the Employee Free Choice Act. We quote “stars” because it’s sort of like finding a couple old B-actors, giving them a script, and putting the whole thing online. We won’t bother you with the actual video because it’s not particularly noteworthy.

But we did like this general response by reason.tv editor Nick Gillespie, writing at reason’s Hit and Run blog:

Most fundamentally, the latest push for unionization uber alles is missing the boat that the nature of work, especially in the private sector, has changed. The whole labor-management split doesn’t make the sense it may have 80 years ago. Even public-sector workers don’t want their compensation to be tied to the least productive of a group. Etc. For those and many other reasons, unionism is being revealed as a historical phenomenon, not a forward-looking trend.

Associated Builders and Contractors certainly believes that much of the current debate misses the reality of the modern workforce and workplace.

The minority on the House Education and Labor Committee have issued this helpful reminder of the things that have come via secret ballot:

The President of the United States
• 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives (including those who support card check)
• 100 members of the U.S. Senate (including those who support card check)
• The governors of the 50 states
• State and local legislators
• School board members in many cities and counties
• College class presidents
• High-school homecoming kings and queens
• Union bosses

As the article concludes, If the secret ballot is good enough for your vote for the president on down to homecoming royalty, why not use one to form a union?

The battle continues over the Employee Free Choice Act. Here are some stories we’re watching play out.

Unfortunately, its leading advocates continue to call detractors “liars” because we point out the truth about EFCA. Congressman Phil Hare reportedly has accused “big business” of lying. But we can all certainly agree this is true: “Hare accuses business groups of spending $200 million on campaigns to, in his words, scare people into believing the act would be bad.” Actually, it’s called educating the public. And they don’t like it much when special interests and politicians get together to remove the secret ballot or insert the government further into the economy.

Meanwhile, Gary Shapiro argues over at Huffington Post that “Card Check Is Not The Solution for Pension Mismanagement”:

The Hudson study, written by a former chief economist at the Department of Labor, went on to find that 21 of the largest multi-employer union pension funds had only 67.7 percent of the reserves needed to meet their obligations, seven were in critical condition, and not one was fully funded. In this group of 21 are some the most vocal, deep-pocketed supporters of card check, including the SEIU and Unite Here.

Perhaps that explains the urgency of imposing card check on U.S. workers. It would be a way for union officials to tap a new funding source to meet federal requirements that they fully fund pension funds by 2011. A fresh crop of unionized employers would subsidize past union pension plan mismanagement and, at the same time, fund the demand for defined benefits from the latest union members.

Meanwhile, labor’s ardent mouthpiece, Harold Meyerson, argues that Democrats should either form an acceptable compromise on EFCA or put it to a vote as-is.

And finally, this helpful dose of reality and reminder from the Michigan Manufacturing Association:

We believe the manufacturing industry and other large employers will likely be the first targets for new organizing drives. Our members, the state’s largest employers, continue to struggle after nearly a decade of economic challenges. Michigan companies striving to compete globally don’t need another layer of cost to make their operations less competitive.