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

The Service Employees International Union is becoming Big Labor’s biggest pain in the neck as union bosses seek to pass the sneakily misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.

The latest comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reports that a rival union is accusing SEIU of intimidating workers and changing ballots in an election.

The NUHW filed charges Nov. 6 with the California Public Employment Relations Board, which oversees the election. Included in the charges are statements from a former SEIU organizer, who said that he was encouraged “to pressure voters to change the ballot” and that on one occasion he himself changed a vote to SEIU’s favor.

The charges also contain statements from workers who said SEIU representatives came to their house as many as five times a day, pressuring them to vote for the SEIU. In one instance, a woman said she was questioned about her legal status. Others were told they would lose wages and benefits if they voted for the NUHW.

SEIU, for its part, denies the allegations, but the case certainly recalls concerns that employers and labor reformers have long harbored about “card check” and the Employee Free Choice Act because they would strip away the protection of the secret ballot. Now it looks like even that is under attack, once again, by SEIU.

Don’t forget the long list of recent allegations against SEIU that directly relate to the fight over card check: accused of intimidation, threatening employers, muscling other unions and their own members, and making demonstrably false claims about EFCA, just to name a few. See more here.

The National Right To Work Foundation has a new video up and it’s worth a quick watch:

We noted yesterday the irony of union officials claiming the need for the Employee Free Choice Act based on alleged employer intimidation of employees — while a leading union is being accused of coercing its own members to keep them from joining a rival.

Well, the same story continues to play out. In the pages of the Washington Post, union organizer-turned-pseudo-scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner decries a supposed “war on organizing.” The Post, of course, fails to mention any financial or historical relationship between the author and unions (or the publisher of her study, the union-run Economic Policy Institute).

There’s more to that story, but we’re confident others are on it.

In the meantime, there are emerging details on allegations against SEIU for intimidating their own members. Ironically, this alleged intimidation comes during a process that allows each union member to vote by a mail-in private ballot — nearly identical to one card check “compromise” being floated as an ostensible way of ensuring worker rights.

It doesn’t sound very much like the mail-in ballot concept is preventing union intimidation:

Today marked the day when 10,000 workers in the Fresno area would begin receiving ballots in the mail. The election is to determine if workers want to remain members of SEIU or join NUHW.

Organized labor is trying to get the secret-ballot-killing (effectively!) Employee Free Choice Act passed. When critics warn that getting rid of the protections of the secret ballot would open employees up to coercion, union bosses say: Who, us??? No way!

Well, it turns out there’s plenty of union-encouraged intimidation in the current process, let alone a future bereft of current protections:

Today is the first day of a highly contested union election for 10,000 homecare workers in Fresno County who are trying to leave the Washington, D.C.-based SEIU, a union that has been condemned by the AFL-CIO for using violence in inter-union conflicts. The stakes have never been higher for SEIU officials, who are desperately trying to stop a movement of nearly 100,000 healthcare workers in California who are organizing to quit SEIU and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

Current and former SEIU organizers have reported SEIU

We certainly don’t want to make too much out of one picture. It’s just a reminder that things get a little heated when there’s too much friction at work (which is why so many are concerned that the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act will cause strife, especially for small businesses that don’t need any more problems right now).

National Right To Work has a new video on card check intimidation.