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

A reader draws our attention to this quote from UNITE HERE co-president John Wilhelm, who has decried efforts by the SEIU to raid and split up his recently merged union. Mr. Wilhelm’s latest line to SEIU president Andy Stern:

“Suppose a burglar broke into your house, stole your property, and demanded ransom. Then the burglar contacts you to demand that a third party be given the right to divide up the stolen property. Would anyone accept such an offer?”

That is certainly a reasonable response to the naked powergrab of the SEIU and Bruce Raynor…and it is exactly how small business people feel about the Employee Free Choice Act.

Coercing employees into signing unions cards, whether by intimidation, trickery or false promises, that will force their employer to cease operations is precisely analogous to this union situation. The Binding Interest Arbitration section of EFCA will force employers into massively underfunded multi-employer pension plans which put the company on the hook for liabilities that are impossible to sustain. This will rob the accumulated net worth of the company and it’s principals who are quite often the ones who took all the risk of building and sustaining the business and the associated employment opportunities.

The “last man standing” concept inherent in multi-employer pension law leaves the “last man” paying for the lifetime retirement packages of workers who may never have worked for the the employer. Take a look at YRC’s situation and you will get the idea. YRC, however, made that decision. It is their bed to lie in just as GM made their foolish deals with the UAW.

Under EFCA, however, that decision will be left to a nebulously defined ‘arbitration panel’ via the US Government agency known as the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. They will be empowered to force BOTH sides, the employer and the newly organized employees, to accept terms that they may not be able to sustain. Who in their right mind would ever agre to that? Now where have we heard that before… Oh yes, an earlier reponse by Mr. Wilhelm to the tyrannical tactics of Mr. Stern and Mr. Raynor:

“No International Union has ever submitted its very future – its membership, its organizing jurisdiction, and its financial resources – to arbitration.”

Substitute ‘International Union’, ‘membership’, and ‘organizing jurisdiction’, with ‘company’, ‘market share’, and ‘core operations’, and we could not agree more.