binding arbitration

SEIU and the Shareholder Resolution Weapon

by Ivan Osorio on January 27, 2010

in Economy, Employment, Labor, Politics as Usual

At Biggovernment.com, blogger Mandy/Liberty Chick has a good, concise account of the rise of shareholder resolutions as a favorite tool of organized labor. By leveraging their pension funds to purchase shares in companies they are trying to organize, unions can bring pressure on those companies, usually as part of a corporate campaign — a coordinated attack on a company’s reputation and ability to do business. She focuses specifically on the use of shareholder resolutions by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has recently emerged as arguably the most powerful union in America.

Utilizing your proxy vote and providing feedback to the board as an active shareholder is a good thing!  But as others have noted, the potential for abuse also exists, if union shareholders engage the board for purposes other than their pension investment interests. Drucker (and lawmakers in the 1970’s) expected that shareholders and their trustees would either engage to positively affect the stock, or they’d sell it if they didn’t like the company’s management.  Perhaps it is this observation that SEIU’s Andy Stern has seized upon. Rather than sell the stock, maybe Stern wants to control the companies in which his pension trust is invested.  It may have less to do with protecting pension investments and more to do with unionizing workers at those companies.

You Don’t Want a Union?  This is My Baseball Bat & I Call It “Shareholder Resolution”

Of all those companies that have been SEIU’s protest targets, most have been the very same corporations in which the $1.9 billion SEIU Master Trust and some of parent Change to Win Investment Group’s $217 billion are invested. Is it also coincidence that many of these corporations were also the very targets of SEIU unionization efforts?

In early 2009, Andy Stern and Anna Burger wrote to the White House and Congress, demanding a list of financial reforms be legislated immediately, including a central regulator, and control over executive compensation and bonuses.  Then in April, SEIU Master Trust director Stephen Abrecht sent a letter to 29 financial firms in which the trust holds investments, demanding that the companies’ directors investigate more than $5 billion in paid bonuses that SEIU says were based upon false metrics. Among those firms on the list were AIG, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, PNC Financial Services and others.

Shortly thereafter, SEIU proposed a number of shareholder resolutions to the boards of many of the companies on that same list, requesting everything from ousting CEOs or board members to controlling employee compensation structures.  Meanwhile, outside on the streets, SEIU’s protests were often coordinated with company meetings and events.  As banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fought against the Employee Free Forced Choice Act legislation, SEIU levied shareholder resolutions against them and issued more demands to Congress for immediate consumer protection and financial reform.

When Anna Burger then testified in front of the Congressional Financial Services Committee in September, not only did she push for a central bank regulator and other financial reforms, but she concluded her testimony by calling for the unionization of bank workers, insisting that the bank workers could then “speak out in protection of consumers” without fear to prevent future crisis.

Not surprising, since SEIU has had its eye on unionizing bank workers for quite some time, placing repeated pressure on banks for years and conducting endless rounds of their infamous corporate campaigns.

The bullying aspects of such tactics is bad enough. Even worse is the effect that using pension funds for objectives other than increasing shareholder value can have on the funds themselves — and on the workers who depend on those funds for their retirement. As Diana Fuchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the Department of Labor, notes in her study of union pension fund performance, published by the Hudson Institute, “an analysis of the financial status of individual pension plans shows that collectively bargained pension plans perform poorly when compared to plans sponsored unilaterally by single employers for non-union employees.”

The rise of private equity has hindered unions’ ability to wield the resolution weapon. In the case of SEIU, it has forced it to become more aggressive in other corporate campaign tactics, including street protests, such as one in October during the American Bankers Association meeting in Chicago, “where some of the protestors dressed in Grim Reaper garb chased down meeting attendees, brandishing cleavers and butcher knives emblazoned with bloody-looking slogans.”

The precarious state of union pensions is a motivating factor behind unions’ aggressive campaigning in favor of the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would allow unions to corral in more members into paying into their pension funds. EFCA’s card-check provision, which would effectively eliminate secret ballots in organizing elections, has proven politically unpopular. However, EFCA’s binding arbitration hasn’t received as much attention.

This provision would enjoin a federally appointed arbitrator — who would be unlikely to know much about the company — to impose a contract after 120 days if the newly unionized company’s management and the union representing its employees could not reach an agreement. This would give union negotiators who don’t get what they want in negotiations an incentive to hold out for arbitration, in the knowledge that they would be certain to do no worse than management’s final offer.

EFCA supporters have been trying to sell this provision as a guarantee of reaching a first contract, but in reality it would take the actual negotiating between the parties out of the contract process. Thus, an employer could find itself facing huge new liabilities in the form of pension obligations.

For more on pension fund activism, see here, here, and here.

For more on SEIU, see here, here, and here.

Say No to EFCA in 2010

by Ivan Osorio on December 29, 2009

in Economy, Features, Labor, Regulation, Zeitgeist

The first calendar year of the Obama administration draws to a close with organized labor not achieving its top legislative priority: the horribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Given the amount of palm-greasing that was required to get reluctant moderate Democratic senators to vote to end debate on Obamacare, it’s unlikely that those same moderate Democrats — especially Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln — would be eager to expose themselves even more to the criticism that they are shifting to their party’s left.

That doesn’t mean that union-supported Democrats are going to stop trying. We should expect to see “compromise” proposals that replace EFCA’s most controversial provision, the “card check” provision that would effectively do away with secret balloting in union representation elections, with some form of “expedited” election process, or possibly take out card check and leave the rest of the bill intact.

Any such “compromise” would still be economically costly. No EFCA supporters have even entertained the possibility of shedding the bill’s binding arbitration provision, which would impose contracts on newly unionized companies. It would do so by enjoining a federally appointed arbitrator to impose a contract if the company’s management and the union have been unable to reach an agreement after 120 days. This would encourage the union to press for maximal demands, in the knowledge that they are very likely to get nothing worse than management’s final offer.

Worse, binding arbitration could impose huge liabilities on a newly unionized companies without the management having a say. One particularly dangerous liability would be the obligation to pay into dangerously underfunded union pension funds. EFCA would allow unions to keep these funds going — for a time — by corralling in new workers into them. Like all such Ponzi schemes, this is bound to crash some day. Keeping it going longer and with more workers would only make the future losses worse — and endanger more workers’ retirements.

This is the point EFCA opponents need to drive home in 2010.

For more on EFCA, see here.

Elaine Chao: Union transparency “more important than Beck;” EFCA “terrible”

by Ivan Osorio on August 25, 2009 · 6 comments

in Economy, Labor, Regulation

Today, at the Heritage Foundation blogger briefing, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao described the union transparency requirements introduced during the Bush administration as “more important than Beck.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in CWA v. Beck is crucial in protecting individuals’ First Amendment right not to be forced to pay for speech or political activity with which they disagree. Under Beck, workers who are required to pay for union representation may reclaim the portion of their dues that are not used for representation purposes — which usually means the portion of their dues used for politics.

Of course, individual workers need to know precisely which portion of their dues is going to politics, which is why accurate and complete union financial reporting is important to rank-and-file members. Organized labor’s leadership fought the new requirements, claiming that they would impose huge administrative costs, but in fact the costs have been minimal for organizations as large as national labor unions.

Those financial reports are now available at unionreports.gov. Current Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, whose appointment was criticized because of her close ties to organized labor (including on this blog), could prove her impartiality by continuing and expanding this program — and she does have a lot to prove, given her past overwhelming support from unions.

Asked about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), Chao described it as an effort by unions to turn the tide on their declining fortunes. “They are losing membership and clout, and they want to change the rules of the game,” she said. She added that Democrats in Congress, who got considerable help from organized labor in gaining their majority in 2006, and expanding it in 2008, want to reward that loyal constiutency.

Noting that EFCA’s first provision, which would have made secret ballots a dead letter in union organizing elections, might be dropped in the  of popular opposition, she warned, “but do not be comforted or assuaged, because the other amendments of this bill are anti-democratic, as well.”

She referred to EFCA’s binding arbitration provision, which would enjoin a federally appointed arbitrator to impose a contract on a newly unionized company if management and the union could not reach agreement on a contract after 120 days. Thus, “the union can hold out and not negotiate, because theyknow that after 120 days, the government will come in.”

“There is nothing in this bill that is worth salvaging,” she said. “This bill is terrible, in that it is employed by the Demorats to reward their allies.”

For more on binding arbitration, see here.

Reason’s Shikha Dalmia on EFCA’s Binding Arbitration Provision

by Ivan Osorio on July 13, 2009

in Economy, Labor, Regulation

With Al Franken joining the Senate, public attention is again turning to the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). In the weekend Wall Street Journal, the Reason Foundation’s Shikha Dalmia makes the case against EFCA’s binding arbitration provision, which has not gotten nearly as much public scrutiny as its now-infamous secret ballot-circumventing card-check provision.

As she notes, many state and local governments have extended compulsory arbitration to their employees, especially public safety workers, in exchange for their giving up the right to strike — to those governments’ subsequent chagrin.

Exhibit A: Michigan.

In 1969, the Wolverine State embraced a form of compulsory arbitration nearly identical to the one proposed in EFCA to resolve disputes with its police and firefighters. Years later, Detroit mayor Coleman Young — who had authored the original law as state senator — rued what he had done. “We now know that compulsory arbitration has been a failure,” he lamented to the National Journal in 1981. “Slowly, inexorably, compulsory interest arbitration has destroyed sensible fiscal management and has caused more damage to the public service than the strikes it was designed to prevent.”

Here’s why:

This process is supposed to install a contract expeditiously. But a review of 29 arbitration cases in 2005 and 2006 by the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy found that the average time involved in a case was almost 15 months — not the four-and-a-half months that the law prescribed, defeating its whole purpose. Moreover, because an arbitration board doesn’t have to live with the consequences of its decision, it has no reason to come up with a workable solution — just one that is politically expedient.

This kind of arrangement has contributed to the dire fiscal situations in which many states and localities now find themselves. During the 1990s boom, increased tax receipts from economic growth enabled governments to pay increased wages and benefits imposed by arbitration. But as the economy turned south, tax revenues have gone down even as those commitments have stayed the same (or even grown).

And now organized labor wants to wrap this millstone around the necks of private employers.

Should EFCA pass, the costs of compulsory arbitration in the private sector will dwarf those in the public sector. That’s because businesses, unlike government, can’t just bill taxpayers to pay off unions. They have to compete.

In a dynamic economy, a business’s survival depends upon its ability to constantly cut costs and innovate. But a company forced into binding arbitration will be frozen for two years (the duration of the initial contract) from making any changes to any aspect of its business that is covered by the contract. Literally every issue — from its 401(k) contributions to its reliance on outside labor — could potentially become subject to review by a government panel that has neither the company-specific knowledge nor the incentive to turn a profit.

In fact, if some unions had their way, 401(k) contributions would be replaced with payments into critically underfunded multi-employer union pension funds. For newly unionized companies brought into these plans, this would represent tens of millions in new liabilities. For many of those companies, it could spell doom. And for what? To subsidize organized labor’s use of pension funds for political activism.

For more on EFCA’s binding arbitration provision, see here.

For more on EFCA in general, see here.

The AFL-CIO’s “Creative Accounting”

by Ivan Osorio on May 29, 2009 · 2 comments

in Economy, Labor

The AFL-CIO has obscured its poor financial condition through “creative accounting,” says Machinists union President Tom Buffenbarger, reports Associated Press.

Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said in a report that the labor federation obscured its financial difficulties heading into last year’s presidential election campaign, in which it backed Democrat Barack Obama. Net assets of the 11 million-member AFL-CIO declined to a negative $2.3 million as of June 30, 2008, from a $66 million surplus on July 1, 2000.

“A new leadership — leaders chosen by our members, leaders help accountable by our members — is needed,” wrote Buffenbarger, who is a member of the AFL-CIO’s finance committee and the president of one of the nation’s largest unions. Alison Omens, a spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO, declined to comment on the report.

Where all that money has gone would take considerable financial detective work to determine, but there are a few obvious places to start looking. First, as the report notes, the AFL-CIO lost more than $13.9 million in annual revenue as a result of the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, and some other unions leaving the AFL-CIO in 2005 to form the new labor federation Change to Win.

But that steep drop in revenues seems not to have cooled the AFL-CIO’s aggressive use of pension funds to advance political goals. This is part of a deliberate strategy, as I wrote in 2005, on a Federalist Society-sponsored panel discussion on institutional investors, where the issue of fiduciary duty proved contentious.

AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Damon Silvers sought to define union pension fund managers’ fiduciary responsibility broadly. First he pointed out that, “There’s a big difference between union and pension funds,” because pension funds have one function, while unions have several functions, and that the AFL-CIO, its affiliates, and “ex-affiliates” — the unions who bolted the old federation and formed Change to Win — seek to maintain that distinction. By this definition, unions’ fiduciary responsibility for their investments does not just address the return on those investments, but how they can advance the unions’ greater goals. As Silvers said, union fund managers must ask the question, “Are these assets being managed in our interest?”

The problem with this view is that such interest can be defined very, very broadly.

Earlier this year [2005], the AFL-CIO successfully pressured some banks and brokerage firms to distance themselves from organizations supportive of the Bush Social Security plan to create private accounts. In a letter to AFL-CIO General Counsel Jonathan Hiatt dated May 3, 2005, Department of Labor Deputy Assistant Secretary for Program Operations Alan Lebowitz stated that, “The Department reiterates its view that plan fiduciaries may not increase expenses, sacrifice investment returns or reduce the security of plan benefits in order to promote collateral goals.” According to The New York Times, the unions’ anti-Social Security reform campaign also involved protest rallies in New York, Washington, San Francisco, and 70 other cities.

The Labor Department was right to call the AFL-CIO on this dubious use of pension funds they are entrusted to manage in the individual pensioners’ interest; any definition of fiduciary that seeks to go beyond increasing shareholder value is mere sophistry. Yet that is precisely what the AFL-CIO has pursued as a deliberate strategy. As Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute notes in a study of union pension funds:

Over the years, unions have successfully changed the operative meaning of fiduciary duty. This process of change started in the early 1990s when the AFL-CIO published Proxy Voting Guidelines. These guidelines encouraged union pension funds to consider not only how investment decisions would affect a pension fund’s financial performance, but also the effect of these decisions on communities, the environment, and the economy. This overly broad interpretation of “fiduciary duty” has allowed unions to join forces with others in the left-leaning progressive community by making investment decisions whose goals are not always consistent with traditional investment strictures.

In her study, Furchtgott-Roth found that union pension funds are severely underfunded compared to private company pension plans. (The current AFL-CIO proxy voting guidelines can be perused here; see page 21 for the “Corporate Responsibility” section.) While Furchtgott-Roth’s study does not single out the AFL-CIO, and Buffenbarger does not specify pensions as a source of trouble, the AFL-CIO is doing a lot of pensioners no favors by promoting a definition of “fiduciary duty” that concerns itself with political activism.

With union pension funds facing severe shortfalls, the obvious first step for unions seeking to address that problem would be to stop digging — that is, focus on shareholder value without other considerations to cloud investment decisions. But rather than opt for a more conservative investment strategy that they have followed to date, union leaders seem more intent on getting access to more dues by corralling in new members, though changes in the law such as the so-called Employee Free Choice Act’s (EFCA).

EFCA’s card-check provision, which would have allowed unions to circumvent secret ballot elections in organizing campaigns, turned out to be a public relations disaster for organized labor — for good reason. Now, however, union activists and their allies on Capitol Hill are looking for ways to get enough support for a “compromise” that would include EFCA’s binding arbitration provision. Under this provision, if a newly unionized company would have 120 days to reach an agreement with the union that had just begun representing its employees. After that period, a federall appointed arbitrator can come in and impose a contract — including retirement benefits.

Thus, literally overnight, a business could find itself on the hook for millions in pension obligations which it did not itself assume. For the union, this allows it to keep its pension fund going for some time longer. For the company, it could spell disaster.

As far as the government is concerned, it should maintain union financial reporting requirement at least at their current level. Rolling them back would allow greater obfuscation of the kind Buffenbarger is denouncing. Moreover, when workers decide on whether to join a union or not, they need to know what they would be getting into.

Lincoln Remains Opposed to EFCA

by Ivan Osorio on May 11, 2009

in Economy, Labor

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 cannot agree on a contract after 120 days, a federally appointed arbitrator can then step in and impose a contract. This provision is finally getting some public attention — including recently from George McGovern. While it would be ideal to see EFCA defeated in toto, the good news is that right now the centrist Senators who hold the balance of power on this issue are unlikely to support binding arbitration. The Hill‘s Michael O’Brien reports:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) indicated last week she does not favor the so-called “binding arbitration” part of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) as currently written.

Lincoln joins two other centrist Democrats in opposition to the second key component of EFCA favored by organized labor, making it difficult for a final compromise of the bill including the provision to overcome a Senate filibuster. …

Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) have expressed their qualms about the arbitration section.

For more on EFCA, see here.

“A good time to start liquidating”

by Ivan Osorio on April 14, 2009

in Economy, Labor

How damaging would the so-called Employee Free Choice Act be to businesses? Enough to force some healthy companies into bankruptcy. Specificaly, EFCA’s binding arbitration provision could lead to newly unionized companies being forced to assume unsupportable new pension liabilities. Thus explained Brett McMahon of the construction firm Miller & Long, speaking to bloggers at The Heritage Foundation today.

EFCA supporters have tried to sell the legislation’s binding arbitration provision as a guarantee of first contract. In fact, it’s a recipe for a government-imposed contract. Under this provision, the company and the newly certified union have 90 days to negotiate a contract. If they have not reached a contract after that time, they must negotiate for another 30 days, at the end of which period a federally appointed arbitrator may step in and impose a contract. This creates incentives for the union negotiators to stall, and thus get a lot of what they want through arbitration.

McMahon describes this 120-day period as “a good time to start liquidating,” since newly unionized companies would then be required to enter into union pension funds, most of which are supposed to back multi-employer defined-benefit plans. “The problem’s they have no money,” said McMahon. “They were losing money hand over fist for a long time,” for various reasons, some of them demographic.

Employers who wish to back out of such plans must pay a withdrawal fee, because, unlike single employer private pension funds, multi-employer funds are insured primarily by the participating employers, not the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). This is an especially bad deal for workers, who could face huge losses when their pension funds default. Unlike single employer plans, which the PBGC insures for up to $54,000 per worker per year, the PBGC can only pay out to a miserly $12,870 per year.

For the company, it means millions (in some cases billions) in new liabilities, which must be stated under FASB 157 mark-to-market valuation rules, which as my colleague John Berlau has noted, force companies to overstate liabilities by making them price assets at what are essentially liquidation prices. Thus, otherwise healthy companies can suddenly find themselves burdened with pension obligations they cannot support. To illustrate how bad these could get, McMahon cited the example of United Parcel Service, for which the least expensive option was to pay $6.1 billion to get out of the Teamsters’ Central States pension fund.

I asked McMahon to comment on the reason so many union pension are underfunded: shareholder activism. He cited the example of the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS), which, as a result of eschewing investments in politically incorrect industries, such as tobacco, has suffered opportunity losses of 17 to 18 percent. (I also referred the group to a study by Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute for background on this topic.)

McMahon rightly characterized this kind of activism as a dereliction of fiduciary duty by pension fund administrators. “Their duties are fiduciary. Their duties are to the people who put their money in their trust,” he said. “They don’t act properly” by making investment decisions based on political criteria, rather than on which investments can provide the best returns. Shareholder activists often seek to promote a broad leftist ideological agenda, often in concert with other left-liberal constituencies (as a Politico article cited at the briefing today illustrates).

For more on EFCA, see here.

Card Check Loses Support, but Threat Isn’t Over

by Ivan Osorio on January 5, 2009 · 1 comment

in Economy, Labor, Regulation

Today in The Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel dissects the shifting political prospects for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), commonly known as the “card check” bill. (“Card check” is a unionization procedure whereby union organizers circumvent the secret ballot process by getting workers to sign union cards in the open, exposing them  to aggressive, hard-sell intimidation tactics.)

It hasn’t been much noticed, but the political ground is already shifting under Big Labor’s card-check initiative. The unions poured unprecedented money and manpower into getting Democrats elected; their payoff was supposed to be a bill that would allow them to intimidate more workers into joining unions. The conventional wisdom was that Barack Obama and an unfettered Democratic majority would write that check, lickety-split.

Instead, union leaders now say they are being told card check won’t happen soon. It seems the Obama team plans to devote its opening months to important issues, like the economy, and has no intention of jumping straight into the mother of all labor brawls. It also seems Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with his new numbers, might not have what it takes to overcome a filibuster. It’s a case study in how quickly a political landscape can change, and how frequently the conventional wisdom is wrong.

Paradoxically, it’s Mr. Reid’s bigger majority that is now hurting him. In 2007, he got every Democrat (save South Dakota’s Tim Johnson, who was out sick) to vote for cloture. But it was an easy vote. Democrats like Mr. Pryor knew the GOP held the filibuster, and that Mr. Bush stood ready with a veto. Now that Mr. Reid has 58 seats, red-state Democrats in particular are worried they might actually have to pass this turkey, infuriating voters and businesses back home.

Indeed, it’s much harder to stand behind a vote when it may lead to tangible consequences, so it’s not that surprising that the prospect of card check actually passing should scare some of its former alleged supporters away — especially with an election being over. But the business community and Senate Republicans need to look beyond card check at EFCA’s other provisions, which would impose other kinds of burdensome labor regulation: binding arbitration and increased “unfair labor practice” penalties on employers.

Binding arbitration would oblige the federal government to appoint an arbitrator, who would impose a contract in a labor dispute, if a union and an employer did not reach an agreement after 120 days. This would allow one side to wait out the 120-day period before having a contract imposed — and since an imposed contract would bring the union closer to its demands relative to conditions under the expired contract, the union would be more likely to use this provision to its advantage. So much for freedom of contract.

In addition, increased penalties for employers over alleged “unfair labor practices” would give unions yet another club to threaten employers with during organizing drives.

As Strassel notes, “Credit for this new environment [of loss of support for card check] goes to a business community that has been uncharacteristically unified in a sweeping campaign against the bill.” However, even as card check begins to lose support, the business community needs to focus on EFCA’s other provisions, which are also extremely harmful — and should be no less radioactive.

Prospects for Card Check in the Obama Administration

by Ivan Osorio on November 5, 2008 · 1 comment

in Economy

Organized labor came out big for Barack Obama and other Democrats running for offices across the country, so we can expect the unions to demand the victorious Dems to enact legislation they want.

Chief among union priorities is the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would allow unions to circumvent secret balloting in union organizing elections. EFCA would allow a union to be recognized by the National Labor Relations Board as the exclusive bargaining agent for workers at a workplace if a majority of them signed union cards — a procedure known as “card check.” This would expose workers to high-pressure intimidation tactics which secret ballots are intended to avoid.

EFCA would also impose a system of binding arbitration, whereby a federally appointed arbitrator would impose a contract whenever labor and management cannot come to an agreement after the period of time stated in the law. (The current version of EFCA has a period of 120 days.)

The unions hope this measure will help them stem decades of membership decline in the private sector. But the reason for that decline is that the American economy has changed a lot since the era when unions were ascendant.

With the U.S. economy in the state it’s in, legislating card check and binding arbitration would be particularly harmful. One key to the resiliency of America’s economy is the nation’s flexible labor market. Introducing rigidities like these would impose costs not only on businesses, but also on workers, many of whom could face fewer job options as employers put off hiring decisions in the face of increased costs imposed on them by EFCA.

With the Democrats’ 60-seat Senate supermajority looking unlikely, Senate Republicans may be able to block some of the worst legislation to come before them. EFCA should be at the top of that category.

For more on card check, see here, here, and here.