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

The president has re-nominated Craig Becker to head the National Labor Relations Board. Becker has, many will remember, written about denying employers the role of speaking to employees about unionizing and many fear that if put on the NLRB he would push card check through alternative means.

The Hill reports today:

Business groups

For those who thought card check was a dead issue would do well to note its continued role in state and national politics. It has popped up in Congressional and Senate races and gubernatorial races and everywhere it goes the union-driven issue seems to politically harm Democrats.

Moreover, because some politicians feel like they need the financial and political support of organized labor, they will not come out and officially kill the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. That leaves the possibility of the bill’s secret insertion into a 1,000+ page bill or so-called “compromise” that threatens employee rights and jobs.

One leader who’s not happy that card check remains alive is House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner, a longtime friend of reasonable economic policy focused on growth. He comes out swinging at policy proposals by highlighting the continued existence of EFCA:

The Las Vegas Review-Journal sums it up best:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that union membership fell again last year to 12.3 percent of all workers. The drop was particularly significant in the private sector, where union membership slipped 10 percent.

The numbers reflect why labor bosses are so adamant about pushing “card-check” legislation through Congress. Rigging the game by getting rid of secret-ballot organizing elections — which unions often lose — might help reverse years of membership declines.

There was an important fact coming out of the latest numbers on union membership: public-sector unions now outweigh private-sector unions. What does that mean? Here’s one way to look at it:

Compare that to the world of government employment, where there is no employer to tell people why a union might not be best for them (we

As our sister site, The Truth About PLAs.com noted, Associated Builders and Contractors member Stephen Worth went up to Capitol Hill yesterday to share his concerns about special-interest agendas that could affect the workplace for ABC’s 25,000 member companies and the rest of America’s free enterprise system.

The Employee Free Choice Act was, of course, a key concern. Worth said:

I feel that no true discussion on union favoritism would be complete without covering the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Under EFCA, workers essentially would be stripped of their right to vote in a federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to join a union. Instead of a private election, workers would be forced to use a biased and inferior system known as

The Wall Street Journal today carries an important story, “AFL-CIO Poll Shows Union Households Boosted Brown.” The gist: union households supported the candidacy of Scott Brown for Senate in this week’s major special election for the Senate, meaning union households oppose large parts of the agenda pushed by organized labor’s top bosses.

The Journal takes a look at what this means for card check:

Signs that unions can’t deliver rank-and-file votes present another challenge for labor leaders trying to salvage their legislative priorities, including a bill that would make it easier for them to organize workers and win initial labor contracts from employers through arbitration. AFL-CIO lobbyist Bill Samuel said the union still holds out hope for the Employee Free Choice Act, which was stalled in the Senate before Mr. Brown’s election.

“We don’t see it being dead,” he said. “We’re obviously reallocating our strategy and the timing,” he said.

Mr. Samuel still expects a vote on the bill to occur this year, he said. “That’s our plan.”

Card check and EFCA have been the “plan” for several years for top labor officials, but the opposition by union households has been there too.

This month new polling showed that 66 percent of union households oppose changing the bargaining process in unionization, which EFCA would do; 51 percent of union households oppose changing the way unions are formed, which EFCA would do; and 77 percent of all voters, as well as 77 percent of union households oppose a government arbitrator having the final say in determining contract terms, which EFCA would do.

This isn’t terribly surprising or new. Polling from early 2009 showed that 85% of union households favor having a federally supervised election as a means to

The White House has renominated organized labor’s lawyer, Craig Becker, to head the National Labor Relations Board. For a refresher on Becker, click here.

UPDATE: more here from the Chamber of Commerce.