Card Check: Getting Worse?
Thursday, September 17th, 2009 by AdminWell, it — the Employee Free Choice Act — can’t get better until it’s scrapped entirely and would-be labor reformers start again with a better set of goals. The Wall Street Journal this morning focuses on Sen. Arlen Specter’s announced effort to reformulate EFCA. The plan seems to include ambush elections and union access to employer facilities.
The Journal:
The new old “card check,” according to Mr. Specter, also gives unions unprecedented access to the workplace and meetings between employers and employees before a vote to unionize. Last we checked the Constitution, even in the age of Obama private companies haven’t signed away their property rights.
An equally problematic binding arbitration provision stays in. This idea would let a federal arbitrator impose a contract if the employer and a newly organized union aren’t able to agree within three months. In other words, a government-sponsored agent would decide what salaries and benefits management will have to pay its employees. Throw in the expanded access to company property, and this so-called compromise bill may be worse than the original.
It would be a feat, of sorts, to out-do the terrible aspects of the original bill. And, we would like to reiterate that (to our knowledge) employers do still have some rights worth preserving.
PS — Don’t forget that the binding arbitration provision could force newly unionized firms into failing union pension funds, creating immediate and massive new liabilities.
