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

While national union leadership is sure to send this guy a quiet message to stay in line, the Boston Globe carries an important story about the exhausted hope labor officials have for Democrats in Washington, D.C.:

Be sure not to miss Associated Builders and Contractors national chairman Jerry Gorski’s article from this weekend on the Employee Free Choice Act and Sen. Arlen Specter.

Gorski’s conclusion:

EFCA could cost up to 600,000 American jobs in the first year alone with millions more job losses to come, according to a study by Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist from the nonpartisan firm LECG consulting.

In light of this study, many Pennsylvania businesses would likely close their doors and workers would be unemployed if EFCA became law.

That is unacceptable.

With many businesses in the state already struggling in this economy, I don’t understand how Specter can justify his surprising reversal on this reckless legislation.

He needs to answer to Pennsylvania workers and businesses that stand to lose if this bill becomes law.

ABC’s own member company Miller and Long’s Brett McMahon is quoted in a great story that recaps that union-payoff angle to the Employee Free Choice Act fight:

Labor groups spent around $450 million on the 2008 election, almost exclusively for pro-union Democrats, and to great success. A Democratic Congress could help expand union rolls through the “card check” provision in the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which removes the secret ballot in union elections. That provision has hit a bump in the Senate, however, and may not appear in a final version of the labor reform bill, which Obama has promised to help pass.

As it stands now, EFCA allows the government to inject itself into certain labor disputes further through binding interest arbitration

The Education and Labor Committee Republicans point to an important story in the Wall Street Journal with an intro:

The perils of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act are well known: it

We wanted to be sure our friends and members in the construction arena saw this item from Portfolio.com regarding project labor agreements:

The battle over PLAs may directly affect only construction companies, but it

In Wyoming, they’re talking Employee Free Choice Act, which is good. But some of the things they’re saying could be misleading. Consider this argument for the bill (and as a response to a criticism of EFCA) from Brett Schock of Casper:

Mr. Hinkle, you have nothing to worry about with the passing of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). As you are a fair employer and “proud of your great working relations with your employees,” this legislation will have no impact upon your business. The Employee Free Choice Act is proposed to address employers that run roughshod over their employees and threaten their jobs if the workers request union representation. The EFCA allows for a secret ballot vote to be held for union representation without the illegal and biased harassment from the employer.

Tsk tsk. Where to begin? Again, and we’re displeased to have to touch on this point, the EFCA may technically allow for ballots in some cases but it effectively eliminates secret ballots.

But what of the question that good employers aren’t hurt? That’s balderdash. First, the bill would harm the overall economy and lead to lost jobs, according to a study by Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar. An overall impaired economy means everyone, including good employers, will feel the pain.

Second, card check or ambush elections mean employees could be mis-educated by union organizers and left with no time to make an informed decision. That’s unfair to everyone, and employees and a good employer are both equally harmed.

Meanwhile, the letter’s author also made this point:

Mr. Hinkle also erroneously stated union membership has dwindled; actually memberships has grown over 12 percent in the last year alone, thanks to the corporate greed and get rich mentality of big business at the cost of fair working wages and benefits to their employees.

Wait! If union membership is going up without the help of EFCA, then why do we need a bill that will kill jobs and effectively eliminate the secret ballot in workplace elections? Doesn’t sound like a very strong rationale for the bill to us.