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

… and all this time we heard from union officials that the anti-democratic, job-killing Employee Free Choice Act was “for the workers” who are — like downtrodden Dickensian characters — under assault by Big Business.

Not so much.

Steve Rosenthal, a powerful and well-connected political strategist, is urging Democrats to pass EFCA and its card check provision for political gain. He suggests, “To energize the union apparatus, which is essential to the Democratic Party’s success in 2010, it is vital that congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act and national health care with no new taxes on workers.”

Rosenthal ought to know about unions and political power. Check out his bio:

Steve Rosenthal is President of They Work for Us and on the board of Working for Us PAC. Previously, Steve was a founder and CEO of America Coming Together (ACT), an organization aimed at empowering and mobilizing progressive voters. Prior to that, Steve served for seven years as political director of the AFL-CIO, where he helped put working families back at the center of the national debate. In the early 90s Steve was Associate Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor and Deputy Political Director for the DNC under Chairman Ron Brown. Steve spent years in the labor movement with CWA and has managed and consulted with congressional, state and local campaigns, and worked in several presidential efforts. He is president of The Organizing Group, a consulting firm that specializes in grassroots voter contact.

Of note are the positions with They Work For Us — the PAC designed to punish moderate Democrats. The irony is that Democratic politicians may well be punished by voters if they go along with EFCA.

Pat McCann is owner of Piggy Pat’s BBQ in New York. It kind of sounds like the kind of place worth checking out, and it definitely sounds like the kind of small business that keeps Americans employed and generates new jobs.

So it’s important to listen to people like Pat and his Piggy Pat warnings, which brings us to his article in yesterday’s Utica Observer-Dispatch.

Pat’s got a lot of concerns, some of which are shared by the Free Enterprise Alliance. In particular, note:

Our representatives in Congress and their party support the health care bill, the federal spending budget, Cap and Trade, Card Check (aka Free Choice bill), extension of unemployment benefits, paid for by employers, and raising the minimum wage.

Indeed, Pat’s right: card check is one of the main ways Congress can kill our competitiveness and small business. Instead, Congress needs to kill card check and save small business.

Our representatives need to listen to us. And order some BBQ.

In the Chinese calendar, there is a year of the Monkey, a year of the Dragon, a year of the Snake, and — in the vein of the latter — possibly a year of Card Check. Bloomberg takes a look at the Employee Free Forced Choice Act.

The article looks at what employers are doing to educate their employees about card check, the Employee Free Choice Act, and unions in general. Nothing earth-shattering, though union spokespeople are often shocked that anyone would dare question their positive effect on organized companies.

But the important part of the story for our purposes is the conclusion, which should come as a warming to EFCA watchers:

The card-check legislation may be incorporated early next year into legislation in the Senate to create jobs, according to Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic consultant and former political director at the AFL-CIO, the nation

You have to love diversity: all range of far-out anti-capitalism groups love the Employee Free Choice and its card check provision. For example, there’s the the Communist Party of the United States. And the Young Communists. And the International Communist Current. And the International Socialist Organization using a picture of a communitarian Jesus.

It’s a veritable rainbow of pink and red political opinion!

The latest is the Workers World Party — socialists — saying all they want for Christmas is their two front teeth card check. On the list of “Top 10 things Santa Claus could do to be helpful” to their cause, the first item is: “1. Grant card check to all the reindeer and the elves so they could elect a union.”

Ahh, yes, nothing says Santa Claus like killing jobs and taking away the right to a secret ballot. What will those wascally comrades come up with next? (Oh, right, the list also includes taking aim at corporate executives, freeing a convicted cop killer, deposing Santa in favor of the Elves, redistributing wealth, and — of course — giving out union cards.)

The Republicans on the House Committee on Education and Labor have a new document out titled “A Year

And the drumbeat of using card check and the Employee Free Choice Act in political campaigns continues:

“If Rob Simmons’ support for card check, cap and trade and partial-birth abortion doesn’t give conservatives pause, his effusive praise for Jimmy Carter certainly should,” Ed Patru, a spokesman for the McMahon campaign, told The Washington Times. “Simmons must be the only Republican in the country who both admits to having voted for Carter and is actually proud of it to this day.”