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

Over the last two years, this blog has documented (obsessively, so me might say), the ill effects and ill tidings of the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. One angle we covered was the manner in which candidates for public office ran on their opposition to EFCA and ran away from their support of same (see here for an example, which doesn’t even include the important Kentucky victory of Sen-elect Rand Paul, who vigorously opposed EFCA during his campaign).

But not everyone could escape their support, nor the consequences. Pat Cleary over at Chamberpost.com looks at Big Labor’s bad election night, and includes this interesting factoid:

…41 anti-democracy candidates who had voted for, cosponsored or endorsed the “Card Check” bill were defeated, including at least 31 who co-sponsored the bill in the 111th Congress.

When it comes to a statement, that’s not a whisper–that’s a shout: NO to card check, NO to binding interest arbitration, NO to one-sided monetary penalties, NO to EFCA.

This is good news, to be sure. But even as voters were going to the polls, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace was noting that the executive branch is still finding backdoor methods of weakening the protection of private-ballot votes for workers deciding whether to join a union.

The fight is headed in the right direction, but is not yet won.

From the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace today:

Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and More Than 225 Business Groups File Brief In Card Check Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. // NOVEMBER 1, 2010 // The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) today released a brief signed by more than 225 U.S. business groups urging the National Labor Relations Board to protect employees

Shopfloor has the latest poll showing Ohioans are no fans of the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. They are in good company. Check out our long list of posts covering polls that show just how unpopular the card check bill is with Americans of just about every stripe.

If you can’t beat ‘em, sneak it through the back door at the 11th hour when the world has rejected you and your agenda.

That’s the potential scenario envisioned by The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who is doing great reporting to highlight these statements by leading Democratic politicians:

In the House, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters last month that for bills like “card check”

For a seemingly endless time we have been discussing the ways in which some politicians want to avoid the issue of card check (because their support for such an ill-conceived and unfair plan would be highly unpopular) while others are happy to bring it up (because their opposition matches the opinion of the vast majority of Americans).

The latest evidence comes from sunny Florida, where Senatorial candidate Marco Rubio discussed card check on Fox Business. Transcript here –

SULLIVAN: We have seen some victories. Health care obviously comes to mind. What do you think the unions want now? What is their big agenda? Is it maybe reinvigorating card check?

RUBIO: Oh, absolutely. I think that

John Gizzi over at Human Events writes about efforts by the Obama Administration and others to push “mini card check” — his term for the effort by the National Mediation Board to approve a regulation that would change the way in which majorities airline and railroad workers approve a new union:

In other words, only those airline and railway workers who choose to vote on whether they want to organize a union will make that decision. One does not have to be an authority on union organizing to guess that this change of rules makes it much easier for labor leaders to expand union membership, thus enhancing their powers.