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

The Washington Examiner, always a fine read, has an editorial this morning about the $10 million in flushed union dues dollars that Big Labor bosses wasted on running a challenger to Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln. The editorial concludes with this cost estimate:

Big Labor has spent an estimated $400 million since 2006 seeking to elect enough Democrats to assure that card check becomes law. Just last month, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ Gerald McEntee said his union would spend another $50 million trying to protect Democratic incumbents in 2010. Here’s to hoping card check opponents in every congressional district in America make ‘em flush it all.

There’s an interesting angle here, and that is what lessons will come from this week’s results. Will candidates realize that they can, indeed, defy powerful labor bosses on the issue of card check? There are certainly a few whispers that are promising.

On the flip side, have union bosses learned not to throw away millions of their members’ hard-earned dues dollars? Have they learned that they can’t force through the most anti-business, anti-jobs, anti-competition political candidates?

Frankly, based on this story in Politico, the simple answer is that it doesn’t seem Big Labor has learned any lessons at all. SEIU’s new president said, “We

The Workforce Fairness Institute has a fantastic new web video up:

Thomas Edsall has some tough-love analysis for organized labor and its on-again, really-on-again love affair with Democratic politicians. In the National Journal, he writes:

If there is one Democratic constituency that has taken a beating with the rising influence of Democrats from the high-tech sector and the ranks of the nation’s professionals, it is organized labor. As labor leaders attempt to capitalize on Democratic control of the White House to win approval of key legislation, they face opposition from Democratic representatives and senators from places with declining or nonexistent union membership and indifference from the party’s upscale Starbucks faction, which seemingly could not care less about the future of the labor movement.

As a result, union leaders have been unable to push through a central goal: the “card-check” provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Senate is on the verge of killing card check, which would replace union representation elections using secret ballots with a system guaranteeing union recognition once a majority of employees sign cards affirming their support. For years, card check has been the be-all and end-all for Big Labor, which sees it as crucial to its survival.

Few interest groups have been a better friend to the party than labor. Not only do unions donate millions to Democrats — $617.6 million since 1990, 12 times the amount they gave to Republicans — but for the past decade, they have also been able to persuade their members, including whites, to vote decisively for Democrats.

Past loyalty, however, counts for little in today’s Democratic Party. The harsh reality facing unions is that they are fading as a force in America politics, and fellow Democrats know it. Since the 2002 enactment of McCain-Feingold legislation barring soft-money contributions, labor donations in federal campaigns have fallen from $96.8 million in 2001-02 to $74.6 million in 2007-08. More important, the number of unionized workers, and their share of the national workforce, has been on a steady downward path since 1955, when 35 percent of U.S. workers were represented by a union. By 2008, that percentage had dropped to 13.7.

Mr. Edsall clearly has valid points on organized labor’s large-dollar donation angle and the sway that it tries to use that influence with respect to card check. But it would be unwise to assume that union officials will not get many items on their wish list — items that will come at a heavy expense to an already-battered economy and tens of millions of working Americans.

Let’s hope he’s right about the fate of card check. But hope is not a plan, so it’s critical to keep engaged in the fight against card check and the rest of the disastrous Employee Free Choice Act.

It’s the oldest problem around: how does a sales team pitch a product that a lot of people aren’t wanting to buy? If you’re a Dilbert fan, the answer is here. If you’re an organized labor fan, the question is much more complicated.

Apparently the head of the AFL-CIO has decided to give organized labor a PR makeover. According to US News and World Report’s website:

Richard Trumka, expected to be elected head of the AFL-CIO later this week, knows labor has an image problem. And he’s ready to take it on. “Our goal,” he says, “is to try to begin to speak again for all workers.” Already, he’s planning to reach out to blacks, young workers, and the working poor. He blames the media in part for the bad image, suggesting that editors cut or trash broader stories on the labor movement.

There’s going to be a number of problems for this re-branding campaign because there are a number of very serious and legitimate objections people have to the way union officials have set up to represent only some workers. Here are some of the not-so-small obstacles:

• Approval of unions in the U.S. is at an all-time low, with 46 percent saying unions mostly hurt the companies they organize, 51 percent saying they mostly hurt the economy, and 62 percent saying they mostly hurt non-union workers
• It will be difficult to explain how unions speak for all workers when they push for union-only Project Labor Agreements that raise costs for taxpayers and cut out most of the construction industry from vital public projects
• It’s also going to be difficult to speak for all workers when organized labor spends heavily to push an unpopular political agenda

All that — and, of course, the wildly unpopular Employee Free Choice Act. So, good luck to union officials hoping to put lipstick on this proverbial pig. We recommend that they address the core concerns of Americans before they go investing too much hope in smoke and mirrors.

Wrong! It’s about many things … control, buckets of money union bosses expect to haul in, and — you guessed it — the political power that money can buy. The folks from Netroots Nation 09 were apparently kind enough to post video of the importance union density plays to electing Democrats:

A more cynical blog would conclude that legislators who support EFCA are doing so for a political advantage. We, however, will simply conclude that some legislators have been genuinely misled about the bill’s attack on workplace democracy and the resulting loss of jobs.

But were EFCA to pass, ignorance would be no excuse for legislators having voted for it or any form of EFCA-lite. Just one more thing for the political calculus.

Louisiana news outlet The Advocate has a fair and provocative article on the fight over the Employee Free Choice Act, but we think this intro leaves a bit out:

The debate is one of Washington