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…

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Two weekend Wall Street Journal editorials sum up well the ticking time-bomb of underfunded union pension funds. First, the dire state of many union pension funds:

On average, the asset to liability ration at so-called multi-employer plans, which union funds make up the bulk of, stood at 66% in 2006, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. By contrast, single employer plans, basically most company-provided pensions, were funded at 96%.

And on who will pick up the tab when these plans implode:

[T]his…

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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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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…

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Detroit can astound even the most seasoned political cynic, and now it’s done it again. As the Detroit Free Press reports, the trustees of the city’s two public employee pension funds have been enjoying perks that even some CEOs would envy, apparently on the pensioners’ dime.

The trustees who oversee Detroit’s two public pensions, their lawyers and staff spent $380,000 over the past year circling the globe to attend conferences — often traveling in packs, with virtually no limitation on where…

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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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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…

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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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…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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“Socialism” is dead, according to Matthew Dallek, writing in the Politico. I put the term in quotes, because what Dallek defines as socialism is so very narrow, that most gradients of socialistic policies are bound to escape his definition.

Even amid the current economic emergency, there is no viable Socialist Party in the United States, nor is there a serious socialist movement, as there was when Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won nearly 1 million votes in both the 1912 and…

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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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