If You Value Freedom, the EFCA Must Die
Today, Democrats have introduced a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act or, as it’s commonly-known, Card Check. If you don’t know anything about it, you really should. I’m guessing when you learn what the Democrats and their labor union money men are trying to put over on you, you’re going to feel more than a little insulted.
The name of the bill implies that it will give the common worker more freedom, but that’s so far from the truth that it might as well be on the other side of the galaxy.
Here’s how unionization works now. If employees want to unionize, they can sign a piece of paper (any old piece of paper will usually do) and ask for an election. If 30% of the employees ask, then there’s an election. Employees vote in secret and the majority wins the day.
Decertifying a union works exactly the same way, no matter what Senator Claire McCaskill says.
The important things to remember are that you decide in public about whether you want an election or not, but when it comes time to cast a real ballot, you enjoy the freedom and protection of casting it privately and anonymously.
The EFCA removes that protection by removing the secret ballot part of the process. Here’s how “card check” will work. An employee will sign a piece of paper that says whether they do or don’t want to be in a union. If more than half the employees say they do, then they’re unionized. If not, then not.
The trick here is that the game is rigged to favor unionization. Employers can never hope to match a union in resources and people that it can bring to bear on an election. Unions have national reach and millions of dollars in their coffers they can spend anywhere they want. If unionization becomes a matter of getting a certain number of names on a piece of paper, the unions will win every single time. That’s what they’re best at.
Remember also, that the piece of paper in question doesn’t have to be an official ballot, clearly written, or non-deceptive. Unions have been known to use some shady or rough tactics with workers in the past to get their votes. Add that to their numerical and financial advantage and you can see why they’re so hot to get this bill passed.
Proponents of the EFCA say that the card-check style of balloting is already in the law and they’re right. Employers can accept the card that are signed in public and allow the employees to unionize. That does happen on occasion (13% of the time between 1998 and 2005). There’s a reason for that – namely that the union has more resources than any employer. Any union can (and has) put hundreds of people on the ground to push their point and they’re not less likely to confuse or intimidate employees than an employer. When it comes down to it, though, the ballot is done secretly so that no matter how much strongarming is done, by either side, before an election, each employee can cast their ballot free from intimidation.
That is, until the unions get their way.
The other part of the EFCA involves the labor agreement that comes after the union gets its 50% plus one. Once a union has majority, it has an incredble amount of leverage because the Federal government is involved in the negotiations between the unions and the employer. The EFCA grants a short amount of time – about 90 days – for both sides to come to an agreement. If they don’t, the Federal government will impose a contract on both sides that is binding for two years, regardless of whether the contract is workable or not. In other words, if the union wants more than the business can pay, all it has to do is wait three months and the Federal government will step in and get that for them.
What? You thought the government was going to step in on the side of small businesses? Oh, silly, silly you. The government wouldn’t force the unions to relent when it came to the Big Three automakers. The current Secretary of Labor has been championing the act and is joined at the hip to the labor unions which are expecting payback. There is no way our government will side against the unions that give Democrats hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and campaign volunteers over someone who has already been dubbed the enemy for making more than $250,000 a year.
The EFCA needs to die a horrible screaming death. It is thuggery wearing the clothes of proper law and we should have no place for that in our free America.
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Category: The Good Old US of A
My recently laid off husband was approached by a union organizer and asked if he'd like to make some money by getting a job in another city in order to force the vote for unionization on a grocery store chain. They would pay for his travel, time and money over what he made on working his grocery store job. They are well funded and they are not afraid to cheat. My husband turned down the job, of course.
Texas….that should be illegal, right? I'm thinking it probably is. And that sounds about normal for unions.