Today’s National Review Online editorial looks at the so-called Employee Free Choice Act’s arbitration provision, which would subject newly unionized companies to having a contract imposed on them by a federally appointed arbitrator.
The worst provision — worse, in fact, than the card-check gambit itself — would allow the National Labor Relations Board to impose contracts on businesses that cannot come to an agreement with a union. If a union enters the picture and the owners of a business are unable…
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Senate Democrats and organized labor leaders are reportedly near a deal on removing the card-check provision from the s0-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). That provision, if enacted, would have made secret ballots in union organizing elections a dead letter.
Naturally, it generated a lot of opposition. Having lost that public opinion battle, Big Labor is now trying to push through the other parts of the bill, including its bindig arbitration provision, which would subject newly unionized companies to the whims…
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At Reason Hit & Run, Michael C. Moynihan looks at the Service Employees Internatinoal Union’s harassing of broadcasters who air ads opposing the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
According to this letter obtained by TPM, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is threatening television stations broadcasting this anti-card check advertisement produced by the Employee Freedom Action Committee. In the letter (viewable here), SEIU lawyer Dora V. Chen tells stations in Arkansas and Nebraska that they should “immediately cease airing this false and deceitful…
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If deceptive labeling of bills in Congess were punishable by regulatory agencies, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) would be paying a hefty fine.
Their so-called “shareholder bill of rights,” recently introduced in the Senate, would impose a one-size fits all regime on public companies that would limit choices for shareholders, reduce corporate performance, and allow political agendas of pressure groups to trump the interests of ordinary investors. Most egregiously, the bill would make illegal a key feature of the corporate…
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California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is withdrawing her support for the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), organized labor’s top legislative priority, reports a California news station. She joins two Democratic colleagues, Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and party switcher Arlen Specter (Penn.), in opposing the bill. (Log-in required to view KHTS news story.)
While this is a serious blow to EFCA in its current form, Democratic leaders are working on devising a “compromise” that would likely not include the current bill’s card-check provision,…
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The possibility of parts of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), specifically EFCA’s binding arbitration provision, coming back into the political arena has focused public attention on how some centrist members of the Senate might vote on cloture if an EFCA-minus-card-check bill were to be introduced. EFCA’s card check provision, which would allow unions to circumvent secret ballots in organizing elections, was extremely controversial and proved unpopular.
Under EFCA’s binding arbitration provision, if a newly unionized company and the union…
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With Democrats just shy of the 60 votes they need to end a filibuster, the fate of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act remains in the balance in the Senate. While the current version of the bill seems unlikely to pass, EFCA supporters are likely to try alternative versions. One such option is EFCA without its controversial card check provision, which would allow unions to circumvent the secret ballot in organizing elections, and has been the bill’s most controversial provision…
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There’s nothing worse for an economy than uncertainty. Today, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has thrown large swathes of America’s struggling economy into a guessing game, with his announcement that he plans to switch parties from Republican to Democrat.
While he has indicated that he would not switch his vote on cloture against the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), he will likely be under pressure from his new fellow Democrats and organized labor to switch that vote, as The American Spectator’s Phil Klein…
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It may not get card check this Congress, but organized labor still has plenty for which to thank the Obama administration. Today, in The American Spectator, F. Vincent Vernuccio describes one such fulfilled item on the unions’ wish list:
Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis betrayed rank and file union members by repealing vital reporting regulations that allowed members to see how union bosses were spending their hard-earned dues money. …
Solis’s repeal weakens one of the chief reporting tools used by…
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Arkansas Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln announced today that she will oppose the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, also known as teh “card check” bill. With Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter announcing his opposition last week, pro-EFCA forces’ chances to muster 60 votes to break a Republican-led filibuster look increasingly slim — for this Congress.
We can now expect organized labor to sink millions (from member dues, of course) into Senate races in 2010.
For more on card check, see here.
…
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An update from our very own Ivan Osorio:
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) is expected to announce this afternoon that he plans to vote against cloture on the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, according to Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who was called by Specter’s office. He announced this at the Capital Research Center labor conference, at which I spoke on a panel this morning.
CongressDaily is also reporting the news.
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The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is being denounced by a group of its own employees for doing, well, nothing wrong or illegal, but something that SEIU wants to keep businesses it unionizes from doing: laying off staff and contracting out some operations. Reports The Washington Post:
The Service Employees International Union, considered the most influential union in the nation, has notified the union that represents about 220 of its national field staff and organizers that 75 of them are being…
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…does organized labor need a PR operation? In today’s Politico, Jeanne Cummings repeats — without qualification — the half-truth that supporters of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) have been peddling recently: that EFCA would give workers the choice of whether to organize through a secret ballot election or through a card check procedure, in which employees sign union cards out in the open, usually at the urging of union organizers.
The legislation doesn’t prohibit the traditional process of elections…
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State legislators are unhappy about the prospect of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) being imposed on their constituents’ businesses. That was a central theme of a news teleconference today, featuring former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and Senator John Thune (R-S.D.), hosted by the Alliance for Worker Freedom. The bill would allow unions to circumvent secret ballot elections in organizing campaigns.
Seven state legislatures have passed resolutions opposing EFCA — Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Georgia, and Washington — and…
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With passage of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) growing more in doubt, organized labor and its Congressional allies are resorting to pushing the claim that the bill would not actually do away with secret ballot elections in union organizing, but only offer employees an alleged choice between secret ballots and card check, whereby they sign union cards out in the open.
As I noted yesterday, this is a rhetorical sleight of hand, based on that EFCA does not explicitly…
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Today’s Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, notes organized labor’s latest hardball tactic in its effort to help enact the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, H.R. 1409), which would effectively replace secret ballot organizing elections with the card check process — whereby union organizers ask employees to sign union cards out in the open. Essentially, some unions want the Treasury Department to muzzle companies that have received any funds under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to keep from lobbying…
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Rumors of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) being introduced in the current Congress have come and gone — and will come again. Yet the Washington rumor mill being so active on this shows just how big an issue this is. For the unions, it is their number one priority, since they see it as a tool to reverse decades of membership decline. For the business community, it would impose yet another dead-weight cost in the middle of a…
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Former Democratic Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern continues to speak out against the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, which he has described as an effort to undermine workplace democracy, because it would replace secret ballot elections with a process known as “card check,” whereby union organizers ask employees to sign union cards out in the open. Video below.
For more on card check, see here and here.
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This week, Dr Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the Law and Economics Consulting Group, published a new study in which she analyzes the likely economic effects of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act if it were to be enacted, especially on employment. EFCA would replace secret ballots in union organizing elections with a process known as card check, whereby union organizers ask employees to sign union cards out in public, thus exposing workers to high-pressure tactics which secret ballots are designed…
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