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

So let’s think this one out: You’re a union boss who’s desperate to get new members to pay your salary and prop up failing pension plans and you’ve come up with a bill that accomplishes that by 1) effectively eliminating secret ballots and 2) imposing government arbitrators to set key (and sensitive) business decisions.

So you’d think that when pushing such a toxic bill — especially one in which the likelihood of union intimidation has become a central concern — union officials would keep a moderate tone and language. That’s what you’d think, but you’d be wrong.

Over at Huffington Post, the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff says “America Needs Warriors for Justice.” Words in his article: warriors, assault, fight, fight hard.

All this begs the question: if unions believe this is a holy war, does that not make employees who wish to remain union-free part of the enemy? And isn’t that precisely the reason we need to give them the protection of a secret ballot to decide whether to join a union?

Read more at:

Interesting item from South Dakota:

South Dakota has been an open-shop state since 1946, when a constitutional amendment passed to forbid using union membership as a condition of employment.

Now, the legislative majority leaders want to ensure that open-shop tradition will continue by means of another amendment – this time to pre-empt the federal Employee Free Choice Act.

The proposed amendment, from state Sen. Dave Knudson of Sioux Falls and state Rep. Bob Faehn of Watertown, simply would state that all elections, whether governmental or union, must be by secret ballot.

That news from the Argus Leader. It’s telling that politicians of any stripe have noticed the antipathy for EFCA is powerful enough to make an issue.

FoundingBloggers.com has rediscovered a classic, which is as good a reason as any to share this classic with you. It’s living proof that legislators ought not let these folks off the leash to use the “persuasion of power” on working Americans without the protection of a secret ballot.

Historical details here.

The Education and Labor Committee Republicans have pointed out this fantastic story from New Zealand:

You know things aren’t going well for the forces of … er, let’s just say proponents of the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. One commentator is down to invoking the name of union folk hero Norma Rae — not her organizing effort so much as her battle with an insurance industry.

Doesn’t make much sense? Unions and their allies are trying to tie the wildly unpopular card check bill with anything that could be more sympathetic. So in this case it’s about getting back at insurance companies (the thought being, it seems, that more workers in unions will mean more power for the Big Labor special interest to attack the insurance lobby).

There’s something that union bosses and their allies may want to remember about the true story of Norma Rae’s union drive. This plot summary from Wikipedia:

Norma Rae Webster is a minimum-wage worker in a cotton mill that has taken too much of a toll on the health of her family for her to ignore her Dickensian working conditions. After hearing a speech by New York union organizer Reuben Warshowsky, Norma Rae decides to join the effort to unionize her shop. This causes conflict at home when Norma Rae’s husband Sonny assumes that her activism is a result of a romance between herself and Reuben. Despite the pressure brought to bear by management, Norma Rae successfully orchestrates an election to unionize the factory, resulting in victory for the union and presumably capitulation for the demands. When Reuben first comes to the factory he tries to get all the workers to start a union, but is soon chased out of the small town. Days later Norma Rae shuts down her machine and stands on top of it striking. Soon the whole factory is with her and a union starts.

Ho, ho, that’s rich! Norma Rae won a ground-up organizing election but Big Labor wants to effectively eliminate the secret ballot process.

Richard Greeley, a legislator from Massachusetts, says card check doesn’t pass the smell test:

Here