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

Two brief bits of news for you this fine morning.

First, in Nevada, “Group plans petitions on secret ballots, paycheck deductions.”

Meanwhile, “Fearing lack of support, communications union bosses are attempting to rig election employees initiated to throw out unwanted union.”

It never ends, does it?

Well, union officials may seem like the favored group in D.C., but that’s not the case in the rest of the nation, with Pew reporting:

Favorable views of labor unions have plummeted since 2007, amid growing public skepticism about unions’ purpose and power. Currently, 41% say they have a favorable opinion of labor unions while about as many (42%) express an unfavorable opinion. In January 2007, a clear majority (58%) had a favorable view of unions while just 31% had an unfavorable impression.

Some numbers to chew on:

Deborah Sutton of New Jersey has strong opinions on the Employee Free Choice Act and that makes hers the letter to the editor of the day when it comes to card check:

What many union members do not understand is that this legislation, if enacted, would have them give up their right to a private vote in these representation elections.

No longer will you be able to cast ballots based upon your belief in private. The votes can be scrutinized by the public. Or, may I be so bold to say, union officials will have to approve of how you vote.

So

Top Beltway insider publication Politico is running a story airing some of labor’s grievances for not having its radical agenda foisted on the American public. As the purpose of this blog is to track, analyze, and opine on all things card check and all things Employee Free Choice Act, the article is certainly of interest to us.

Note this, in particular:

The Employee Free Choice Act didn’t even get a mention in the State of the Union, though Obama technically supports it. Senate Democrats like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas have appeared to bend to fierce local pressure to oppose it. Still, the unions fight on: The act is “still one of our top priorities,” said AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale. “[We] still think it can be done.”

The union is continuing to push the legislation with state events, asking members to call and write Congress and lobbying legislators and making the case that stronger unions are part of a stronger economy.

Union officials have dumped too much of their credibility (and their members’ money) to walk away without anything they can claim as a victory and it’s clear they are still discussing methods of attaching EFCA language to other bills.

Whether they are successful depends on the level of vigilance shown by proponents of workplace democracy, who must also call and write Congress and lobby legislators to halt the assault on the free enterprise system.

Carter Wood has a fantastic post over at Shopfloor on politicizing the National Labor Relations Board and points to a rash of rash press statements made by the Board’s Chair, Wilma Liebman. That an NLRB chair is even making such statements is cause for concert, let along her championing the nomination of another individual (let alone, again, that of far-out Craig Becker).

Wood offers:

These are all familiar discussions in the political sphere and in policy disputes. But the NLRB is a quasi-judicial agency,

David Nye, professor of Management at Athens State University in Alabama, has a great article on more ways to look at the downside of the Employee Free Choice Act.

In particular, our attention was drawn to the negotiation aspect of EFCA and the way in which it would replace a responsible system currently in place with an absurd method of binding interest arbitration:

Like EFCA, current law forces employers to deal with union quasi-monopolies, but unions still must either temper their demands or put them to the test of the market when an employer digs in. Can employees strike and find in the market the wages and benefits they seek, leaving the struck firm unable to find qualified replacements at its current pay rates?

Under EFCA, this check on excessive union demands disappears. Through its arbitration panels, the Obama administration would effectively write labor contracts to fulfill the wishes of its union friends, and union monopoly would no longer be