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

Unions have their lowest approval since the esteemed Gallup organization started looking at the issue in 1936. The consequences, according to the firm, could come as organized labor seeks to push the Employee Free Choice Act:

This year’s Gallup update on views toward unions comes in the midst of an economic recession, and in the aftermath of major economic interventions by the U.S. government on behalf of two of the Big Three domestic auto companies.

The update also comes as the Employee Free Choice Act — a proposal to significantly change collective bargaining laws — is still under consideration by Congress. If passed as originally proposed, the bill would most likely make it easier for unions to organize. In fact, proponents of EFCA (who feel the current system is stacked against unions) say that’s the intent. However, those changes may be going against the tide of public opinion, which currently is at historically low ebb for unions.

That’s something worth noting for politicians seeking the counsel of the public. There are plenty of interesting figures, including:

• The percentage saying unions mostly hurt the companies where workers are organized has risen from 39% in 2006 to 46% in the latest poll
• There has been an even larger jump in the percentage saying labor unions mostly hurt the U.S. economy, from 36% in 2006 to 51% today
• Americans’ most negative assessments of unions — as has typically been the case — involve their impact on non-union workers. More than 6 in 10 Americans, up from about half in 2006, say unions mostly hurt non-union workers.

No one seems to really know what’s going on with the Employee Free Choice Act right now. BusinessWeek, citing AFL-CIO president-in-waiting Richard Trumka, says “A Card Check Compromise by Year End” while The Hill runs with “AFL-CIO suggests a hedge on card-check.” Meanwhile, it’s mixed signals as we get “Employee Free Choice Act” battle renewed” from the Denver Post.

There is considerably less confusion over who opposes the bill, though. In Madison, Wisconsin, a group of businessmen have come out adamantly against EFCA. In California, the Governator has once again vetoed card check language in his state. And in Washington, D.C., leading Republican Senator Mitch McConnell says GOP won’t support EFCA.

The good folks at the People’s Weekly World — those adorable little socialists — have been kind enough to do the hard work of encapsulating everything the Obama administration has done for Big Labor since taking the White House.

A sampling:

The president has overturned a whole series of Bush anti-worker executive orders, substituting for them his own pro-worker orders: These include restoring project labor agreements on federally funded construction, ordering federal agencies to post notices in workplaces that inform workers of their rights, including the right to join unions, and ending the Bush policy of contracting work out to private companies.

The president has issued another executive order that bans any entity receiving federal funds from using those dollars against union organizing.

The pro-labor tone was set right from the beginning. The first law the Democratic-run Congress passed and Obama signed was the Lily Ledbetter Act, named for an Alabama grandmother who sued Goodyear for pay discrimination based on sex. She had won in lower courts but lost in the Supreme Court, 5-4, in 2007. The justices said suits could not be filed after 180 days on the job.

But wait, there’s more! We’re not going to go into it all, but suffice it to say — the article is lengthy. As ABC members know, the executive orders signed immediately by the new president threaten to impose harmful policies.

After all these items, it may surprise the average reader to know how hard union officials are still demanding “public option” health insurance and the Employee Free Choice Act. Apparently all the small items were simply appetizers, waiting for health care as a main course and EFCA as some sort of terrible dessert

The Employee Free Choice Act may be off the menu, but it’s still on the table. And it’s bad news for restaurants. Warner Todd Huston at Publius’ Forum has the story: “Union Expense Forces 92-Year-Old Restaurant to Close.” His conclusion: “And Obama wants to unleash this destructive force on the whole country.”

The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel is running a great interview with Glenn Spencer of the Workforce Fairness Initiative about the state of play and likely future of the Employee Free Choice Act. See:

Editor: I have heard that the card- check provision has been removed as part of the discussions you described.

Spencer: A story was floated before the Congressional recess in The New York Times that suggested that this group of senators had agreed to get rid of the secret ballot provisions of EFCA. However, that story was quickly shot down, most notably by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The AFL-CIO also said that they wouldn’t be supportive of a bill that did not allow them to bypass secret ballot elections. Therefore, I’m not sure that there actually is an alternate bill that’s even close to being ready to go, but obviously we will monitor that very closely.

Even if The New York Times story were right and the card-check provision was definitively eliminated there are other elements in the so-called compromise which would make the bill unacceptable to business.

Read the rest.