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

Labor leaders are in disarray following the Republican win in Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Kris Maher. The whole story is worth reading, but a couple parts in particular caught our eyes:

First, one labor leader says:

Tuesday’s win by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts dealt a blow to labor’s multiyear, multimillion dollar effort to put Democrats in the majority of the House and Senate. Labor officials viewed the 60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate as essential for passing the organizing bill, which would benefit unions by shortening the time period before union-organizing elections, mandating arbitration of first contracts and boosting penalties for employers who violate labor laws.

The bill was already on shaky ground, due to strong opposition from business, Republicans and some moderate Democrats. Now some labor officials believe it’s doomed.

“Personally I think that becomes a dead issue for the year 2010,” said Thomas Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists. “It’s an election year and I think people are going to focus on what’s most important.”

Most important? We thought EFCA was supposed to be the one-stop economic cure-all. At least that’s what several years worth of blathering propaganda promised, though it didn’t seem to convince many folks.

But here’s this other little gem:

“Congress and the White House need to focus like a laser beam on the jobs issue and failure to do so will have consequences in November,” said Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff for the AFL-CIO. She declined to comment on specific strategy.

Shouldn’t we assume our elected leaders have been focusing like a laser beam on jobs this whole time, since that’s all we’ve heard about for the last two years? Perhaps that focus on jobs is why Congress has been so reluctant to pick up the issue of card check, since it is a jobs-killer.

Still, other labor officials are saying now is the time to double down on the union agenda. Our friends at Shopfloor.org noted this quote from SEIU’s Andy Stern:

The reason Ted Kennedy

The inimitable Michael Ramirez from Investors Business Daily sends his gaze and his quill to the intimate relationship between organized labor and elected officials in Congress. It’s a great deal for them, but one that is quite lacking for the rest of us.

We don’t think we even need to draw the map on how organized labor expects to “persuade” Congress on issues like card check.

Chalk up yet another editorial supporting the retention of a secret-ballot workplace election. This time, it’s from the Greenville News, which writes:

American workers should not be denied the right to organize, and the current system really is the best environment for unionization elections. The card check system opens the door to intimidation by union organizers. What worker wouldn

The Workforce Fairness Institute has a new poll — of union households in Nevada — with some interesting figures:

• 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.
• 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.

Check out the poll over at WFI’s website, and click here to see a history of polling we’ve highlighted.

Our colleagues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted a conference yesterday looking at the use of “corporate campaign” tactics by union officials to attack the reputation of employers.

Of course, the biggest perpetrator right now of those campaigns is SEIU — whose antics (and worse) we have thoroughly documented as they create a massive black eye for the Employee Free Choice Act.

But card check organizing and corporate campaigns go hand in hand because often the goal of corporate campaigns is to “convince” the employer to offer unfettered card check access to employees (and therefore trade away the right to a secret ballot for all those employees). Therefore it’s important to know what corporate campaigns really look like.

Check out this recap of yesterday’s event at BigGovernment.com, which highlights the story of business owner Dave Bego who says he was told by SEIU “negotiators” that “We enjoy conversation, but we embrace confrontation.” And, of course, check out our litany of stories about SEIU.

Who can show more distaste for the Employee Free Choice Act? That is the central question right now in Connecticut’s Senate race:

U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon today slammed Republican opponent Rob Simmons, accusing him of flip-flopping on the Employee Free Choice Act.

The proposal, commonly known as “card check,” would permit workers to form a union if a majority sign pro-union cards, instead of voting by secret ballot. It is being pushed by union activists and their allies in Congress, over the objection of business groups that want it excluded from a bill intended to encourage job creation.

This has become quite the phenomenon: candidates using their lack of support — or outright opposition to — EFCA and its card check provision because they are so wildly unpopular. It has appeared as a central issue for candidates and voters in Virginia, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, and now in Connecticut (and probably more that slipped past us in the holiday rush).

All of which makes the case of AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka’s called-shot of an EFCA home run — passage in the Spring — all the stranger.

How long will organized labor’s top executives continue to push a bad bill (and a bad political move, at that)? One can only surmise based on the mixed messages of Trumka and fellow traveler Andy Stern. But the longer this issue hangs out, the longer jobs and employee rights remained under threat … and the longer politicians can use their opposition to the bill to score some points back home.