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

The Wall Street Journal turns its gaze across the nation to Oregon, which has passed a mini-Employee Free Choice Act known as the “Worker Freedom Act” designed not only to make unionizing easier but to silence employers who would dare speak to their own employees about unions.

The Journal reports:

Oregon is the only state to pass such a law so far, but it is considered a test case, with developments closely watched by national business groups and state-level labor leaders around the country.

Similar bills prohibiting mandatory workplace meetings about union organizing passed this year in the Connecticut Senate and the Michigan House, both controlled by Democrats, but stalled in each state.

Both sides see the Oregon law as a local variation of the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card check, which allows unions to organize workers by getting them to sign cards, often without an employer’s knowledge.

Patrick Semmens, with The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which opposes efforts to expand unionization, said Oregon’s law is similar to card check because both limit an employer’s access to workers during union organizing. The Oregon law is “a step toward card check,” he said.

The Journal goes on to look at other possibilities, but these kind of state-based speech-limiting laws pose another significant threat to employer speech, employee rights, and ultimately jobs.

Richard Epstein, the scholar who has written extensively about the flaws in the jokingly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, has turned his attention to the National Labor Relations Board nomination of Craig Becker. The nomination has troubled many employer groups because Becker’s writing history leaves much room for concern.

Over at Forbes, Epstein lays out his case against problems in the National Labor Relations Act and, in particular, Becker’s record:

For the record, I think that Becker’s thesis is instructively incorrect. The NLRA makes huge changes in ordinary common law rules under which the employer should have no say in union affairs. They don’t need that right because they may flat out refuse to bargain, and can make it very clear in advance that they won’t. But once the union is given that right, the remainder of the legal system has to be adjusted to constrain labor’s monopoly power. Employer speech to workers is one essential element of that new reality. Becker’s article thus lacks a consistent frame for employer speech.

Be sure to click through to the story.

The Wall Street Journal is maintaining its vigilance against job-killing legislation, including the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. They offer some sound economic advice, though couched in political terms:

If Democrats really want to create jobs and save themselves from a debacle in 2010, their best policy option is to stop creating so much investment uncertainty and additional barriers to business hiring.

Stop trying to raise business costs by making it easier to unionize via “card check.” Stop trying to raise energy costs with a cap-and-tax bill. Stop adding to the deficit and future tax burden with a 12% increase in domestic spending for 2010.

Above all, stop trying to ram through Congress on a partisan vote a health-care bill that imposes a 5.4-percentage-point income tax “surcharge” on anyone making more than $500,000 a year. The Joint Tax Committee reports that one-third of this $460.5 billion tax increase will be paid by small business job creators who file their taxes under the individual income tax code. Amid a 10.2% jobless rate, the highest in 26 years, this tax increase is the definition of insanity.

H/t: House Committee on Education and Labor Republicans.

As we’ve been following, Gov-elect Bob McDonnell won his Virginia race in large part because of his positions on key national issues such as the terrifyingly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. Since his win, McDonnell has not let up on those issues, reiterating this Sunday:

“Bills like card check, cap-and-trade, some of the unfunded mandates on business and the stimulus bill, some of the other micromanagement of the free enterprise system, significant tax increases, those are the things that I don’t think are good for our citizens or good for our business.”

We were glad the voters of Virginia, in choosing McDonnell, rejected card check and the Employee Free Choice Act. We are even more glad that McDonnell is keeping the heat on the issue — it could serve as a lesson for politicians facing their own battles in 2010.

Michael Barone takes a look at this week’s election results and concludes the Big Labor agenda was rejected by voters. Looking at a number of issues, and in particular card check, Barone writes:

The unions’ unprecedented political push in 2008 has not been unnoticed by the voters. Mr. Corzine’s cozy relationship with public employee union heads proved a liability in New Jersey, and in Virginia Mr. McDonnell campaigned hard against card check and the Obama agenda. The Gallup organization reports that Americans are less pro-union than they have been at any time since it first started asking the question in 1936. Maybe around the country union members will start asking their leaders what they have gotten for all the money they’ve spent on politics.

It’s not news for close watchers that card check — via the Employee Free Choice Act — has yet to move forward in this Congress. But, as we’ve warned repeatedly, that doesn’t mean the issue is gone. In fact, a writer over at the Beltway publication The Hill has already put EFCA on the Democrats’ agenda for next year.

No let up!