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

The Hawaii’s Star-Bulletin editorial board writes:

Gov. Linda Lingle has promised to issue her second veto of a bill that would allow labor unions in Hawaii to circumvent secret elections in organizing campaigns. The issue now is before Congress to find a compromise that would prevent intimidation from labor or management in determining union representations of employees …

Card check is no remedy. Darwin L.C. Ching, director of Hawaii’s Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, correctly pointed out in testimony to legislators that in such a system “there is no way to determine whether a worker’s signature was given freely and without intimidation, pressure or coercion from fellow employees, labor representatives, or the employer.”

One of the stated goals of the unfortunately misnamed Employee Free Choice Act is to improve the wages and retirement security of working Americans by “helping” more of them to get into unions without having the chance to vote in a private ballot election.

The Alliance for Worker Freedom today has warned that the “next taxpayer bailout” is “aimed at failing union pension funds” and more specifically:

• Average union pension has resources to cover only 62% of what is owned to participants
• Less than one in every 160 workers is covered by a union pension with the required assets
• In a Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation Rescue, pensioners only get $12k/year
  

More local opinion from across the nation continues to roll in against the sadly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.

Gary Gardner from Springfield, Missouri writes:

Does anyone think the employees who vote publicly and openly against the union by signing a card won’t be harassed by the union? Just remember the union strike at Associated Wholesale Grocers awhile back when the union didn’t get their way, and how they vandalized merchandise in affiliated grocery store and assaulted a worker who drove an AWG truck just trying to feed his family.

If employees want to vote on a union that is their right; however if they want a fair and harassment-free vote, they’re much safer voting by secret ballot instead of a forced card check.

Meanwhile, Dawn Sutter from Pocono Lake, California writes:

This expansion of government power is almost like re-establishing wage and price controls in our economy, and could put many employers out of business. With the current state of the economy, do we really need to put more employers out of business?

A great letter from Chris Taylor in the Daily Reflector:

In my previous career, I worked for 30 years in manufacturing operations for two international companies. I worked in both non-union and union plants.

I have worked with five different unions including the Teamsters and UAW. I have seen first hand the advantages of a non-union plant. Employees can talk with their supervisors and managers without the need for union representation. In a union-based operation, an employee can lose their individuality and their voice in the workplace. Their union representative often speaks for them.

A union contract is very lengthy and often open to interpretation. Much time is wasted in employee/union/management meetings. This wasted time leads to a loss in productivity, decreased employee morale and can lead to conflict with management as well as fellow employees. Product quality can suffer. Smaller companies as well as larger companies incur additional costs which makes them less competitive. With the downturn in the current economy, we do not need legislation that would undermine our nation’s competitiveness. Currently, members of Congress are debating a dangerous piece of legislation falsely called the Employee Free Choice Act. This act has nothing to do with freedom, in fact it denies the employee’s right to a secret ballot, nor does it serve the interests of America’s workforce. Furthermore, the act targets small businesses with three or more employees. Based on my experience of 30 years, I can confidently say this act will expand union membership and contract our local economy. Contact your elected officials in Washington and urge them to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.

The National Right To Work Foundation has a new video up and it’s worth a quick watch:

The ever-expanding Washington Examiner — the publication that recently announced it has added intellectual heavyweights to its staff and the well-known Weekly Standard to its portfolio — continues to do great work on the link between failing union pension funds and the need for union officials to pass the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.

In an editorial this morning, the Examiner argues:

Private firms could be required to save underfunded union pension plans even if doing so reduces profits and jeopardizes the retirement savings of non-union workers. That’s the consequence of a binding arbitration provision in a proposal now before Congress. The provision is included in the horribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (aka Card Check) and may actually be the primary driving force behind the measure, which is described by labor bosses as their top legislative priority for 2009. Card Check abolishes secret balloting voting for employees in workplace representation elections, and mandates that federal arbitrators impose settlements when a company fails to reach an agreement with a newly recognized union within 120 days.

Card Check would not bar federal arbitrators from forcing companies into union-negotiated multi-employer pension plans, many of which are severely underfunded and staggering under steadily increasing rising liabilities. Pensions for nearly half of the nation’s 20 largest unions are classified as either “endangered” or in “critical” condition due to underfunding, according to federal actuarial reports. Pensions with less than 80 percent of the assets needed to cover present and projected liabilities are considered “endangered,” while those below 65 percent are classified as “critical” under the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The average union pension has resources to cover only 62 percent of what is owed to participants, according to the government-backed Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC). Less than one in 160 workers is presently covered by a properly funded union pension plan. Failed pension plans are bailed out by the PBGC.

But opposition to abolishing the secret ballot in the workplace is growing steadily, forcing Card Check backers to seek a legislative compromise with opponents. But if the compromise includes the mandatory arbitration provision, unions, particularly those with sickly pension plans, will be tempted to resist settling with a company, knowing that federal arbitrators will likely impose a settlement that is more to their liking, according to Ted Phlegar, senior counsel to the Workforce Freedom Initiative. “Unions are pushing this bill because they need members and they need the contributions as many of these funds are underwater. This is one way to save them,” Phlegar said. “In fact, this may have been the goal all along.” In other words, a Card Check compromise that includes mandatory arbitration would give unions that inadequately funded their pension plans a backdoor way to get a bailout, paid for either by the company or the tax payers.

UPDATE: Diana Furchtgott-Roth has this:

On June 22 a court hearing is scheduled to decide whether the Minneapolis Star Tribune, now in bankruptcy, will be allowed to withdraw from the underfunded Central States Teamsters pension plan, which provides pensions to 190 of its full- and part-time drivers. For the sake of the workers, the Star Tribune should be allowed to withdraw.