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

The good folks of South Carolina are still focusing on the not-yet-dead issue of the Employee Free Choice Act and are considering state-based efforts at guaranteeing the right to an employee’s private ballot election to decide whether to join a union.

The Greenville News has this opinion, which we find it hard to imagine would have very many detractors:

Workers in South Carolina

Sometimes a person puts a problem so succinctly there isn’t much use in trying to improve upon it. And while we don’t endorse 100 percent of this letter, the exasperation that comes through is worth understanding:

Currently they are attempting to ram the unwanted and inefficient “health care” law down the throats of the people. It will be followed by the “cap and trade” energy law, which will increase the cost of energy for the whole economy.

Waiting in the wings is the “card check” unionization of the work force. This will only burden business with more cost and loss of the right to run their business as efficiently as possible.

The final step is Obama’s failure to do anything to continue or improve the tax law that expires Dec. 31.

Outspoken ABC member Brett McMahon of Miller & Long writes:

The mainstream media is already declaring defeat of the Big Labor agenda during Obama

Armand Thiebolt has some strong thoughts on trade unions and the Obama administration, highlighting the problem of the Employee Free Choice Act to lead off his thoughts.

Be sure to check it out.

Those wascally wabits at the euphemistically named “American Rights At Work” labor front group are continuing in their mission to obfuscate about the effect of the equally euphemistic “Employee Free Choice Act.” In a letter, a spokesman claims: “The bill simply allows workers, not their bosses, to choose how they want to form a union.” Riiiight. Unless one has actually read the bill.

Elsewhere, more informed readers offer their own opinions. In the Tennessean, Todd Malone writes: “Facetiously speaking here, maybe we should urge our lawmakers to propose a bill called the Voters Free Choice Act. We could apply it to all elections. Our votes for public office and policy would be made known to everyone.”

One gentleman offers his decades of experience and concludes EFCA would be detrimental to workers:

As a member of the engineering staff, I was an interested spectator on four occasions when such organizing drives were undertaken at my place of employment. In each case, well more than a majority of all employees signed up as wanting to join the union in Step 1.

But, in the secret balloting, the unionization drive was soundly defeated. Four times.

The only way to determine the true feelings of those voting is by secret ballot. It is their right. And it must be preserved.

Republicans from Carson, Nevada are making no bones about their opposition to card check: “We support the right to work in Nevada, oppose card check in any form; if card check passes in Congress, we demand that the governor and legislators join in any legal opposition to card check legislation..”

And one guys has several salient facts to consider:

Union membership should be voluntary, not forced. Union bosses spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect this president and Congress, and they are demanding payback. The president has frequent visits by union big shots such as Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, who has his sights on nurses and doctors as a prime target, if President Barack Obama’s health care law is passed. Private-sector unions lost about 10 percent of their membership last year. Some of these people would not put up with the radical political agenda Big Labor exposes.

The Birmingham News has a great take on union density figures and the need for card check in that an increase in the former means a decrease in the rationale for the latter.

The News says the argument for EFCA is undercut:

Back to Alabama, where instead of union membership declining, membership is increasing, even as unemployment continues to rise. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership climbed by 10,000 workers in 2009, to a total of 181,000. The number of state residents represented by unions (they’re covered by union contracts but are not official union members) rose to 212,000, or 12 percent of all state workers.

Alabama’s percentage of union workers is more than double border states Tennessee (5.1 percent), Mississippi (4.8 percent) and Georgia (4.6 percent). Alabama’s story doesn’t help the unions make their case.
With Congress expected to become more Republican after this year’s elections, union leaders know they’re running out of time on this lousy card-check idea.

Exactly.