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

“Employer” sounds too nice, but you can’t complain about “anti-union” CEOs or companies. Those are among the lessons from a document carrying the letterhead of the Service Employees International Union and its trade association, Change for Working Families.

It’s a how-to guide for avoiding the real point of the Employee Free Choice Act and card check … wait, strike that. SEIU’s minions are told not to use the term “card check” (it’s toxic, after all).

Instead, they are instructed to use the old gem “majority sign-up.” And don’t dare mention the secret ballot or private ballot system that currently protects employees — try to bend facts (or avoid them) to describe a “company-dominated system.” And for goodness sake, don’t say “Our union or labor is behind this bill” … that would be too honest! Blame it on “workers” or “working people. Likewise, don’t say EFCA is about making it “easier for unions to organize workers.”

All this may not be surprising, but the extent to which SEIU wants to avoid discussing the union role in EFCA is remarkable. The flyer instructs spokespeople not to discuss the “process or conflict” of organizing and avoid the normal “tone that sounds angry, demagogues CEOs, or over-generalizes about business.” Instead, there’s suggested obfuscatory claptrap.

The document is likely a reflection of organized labor’s plummeting popularity with Americans. See a collection of public opinion polls here. We’re tempted to make a reference to Orwell, but he’s not the one spinning here — that’s SEIU.

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 Wall Street Journal this morning lays out its case of concern over National Labor Relations Board nominee Craig Becker, who has been a lawyer for the provocative union, SEIU. In that role, he was tied to ACORN and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

There’s more. One of the many accusations leveled against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is that he accepted money from the SEIU in return for taking actions giving collective bargaining rights to Illinois home health-care workers. While Mr. Becker denies any knowledge of, or role in, contributions to the former Governor, he does admit that he provided “advice and counsel to SEIU relating to proposed executive orders and proposed legislation giving homecare workers a right to organize and engage in collective bargaining under state law.”

Mr. Becker says he “worked with and provided advice” to SEIU Local 880 in Chicago, a beneficiary of the newly unionized health workers, and one of two SEIU locals currently in the national spotlight for its deep ties with Acorn. Mr. Becker denies working for Acorn or its affiliates, but as recently as April Acorn co-founder Wade Rathke praised Mr. Becker by name, noting “For my money, Craig’s signal contribution has been his work in crafting and executing the legal strategies and protections which have allowed the effective organization of informal workers, and by this I mean home health-care workers.”

Obviously, the NLRB is critical to maintaining the health of U.S. labor laws so it bears watching who sits on the board.

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.

Remember how we told you that liberal activists hope to use the un-democratic, anti-jobs, anti-business bill known euphemistically as the Employee Free Choice Act to make conservatism an endangered species? Well, the picture is becoming even more clear now. It looks like leading SEIU official Anna Burger will be speaking at the event slated for later this week in Pittsburgh.

We’re sure she will get the crowd whipped up well — but we aren’t as confident they will be informed about EFCA’s threat to jobs, its threat to democracy, or SEIU’s own record of union busting, union raiding, and hypocrisy.

In the course of watching news from around the country, we came across an interesting editorial from Washington State. It seems union officials have taken to running attack ads against a key Democratic state legislator for trying to close the state’s enormous budget gap.

But after taking a few unions to task for the ads, the Seattle Times editorial page notes “SEIU is particularly adept at smear campaigns…” SEIU, of course, is the most visible union pushing the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act — it’s also the union that busts union drives by its own staff, dumps millions of dollars into leftwing groups like ACORN, and raids rival unions in hopes of picking up extra dues dollars.

This reminder from the Times ought to be a “remindable moment” if not “teachable moment” for those wondering what kind of people are pushing card check and EFCA.