The Employee "No" Choice Act would strip workers of their right to vote by secret ballot in union organizing elections, strangle economic growth and allow government bureaucrats to impose union contracts on employees and employers. Employees lose, employers lose, Big Labor bosses win ... who else wins?
Passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would result in millions in additional political funds for organized labor over the next 10 years, a business group opposed to the legislation will argue in a report to be released Tuesday.
Unions would stand to gain an additional $320 million more to spend on political activities in year ten alone with a ten year total of $1.75 billion, according to a report put together by the anti-EFCA Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI).
By now, you probably know that Big Labor's card check bill strips workers of their fundamental right to vote by secret ballot in union organizing elections. But it's card check's dirty little secret that is predicted to have a much bigger impact -- binding arbitration.
"I think everybody now agrees that there needs to be binding arbitration; not everyone, I'd say there's an overwhelming majority that agrees there needs to be binding arbitration."
Our Honorary Chairman, Senator John Ensign, participated in a blogger conference call earlier this week to discuss the importance of stopping card check.
But the most grievous threat to future prosperity may be off-budget -- the inaptly named Employee Free Choice Act. Also known as card check, the legislation would effectively abolish secret ballots in unionization elections. It provides that once a majority of employees had filled out sign-up cards circulated by union organizers, the employer would have to recognize and bargain with the union. And if the two sides didn't reach agreement in a short term, federal arbitrators would impose one. Wages, fringe benefits and work rules would all be imposed by the federal government.
So, you might ask, what do Democrats get out of the deal?
The Trentonian writes about Big Labor's "desperation move" to pass the "insultingly named 'The Employee Free Choice Act'":
The advocates say that card sign-ups are necessary because management intimidation leads employees to vote no in unionization elections. C'mon, now. Employees are intimidated when they cast a secret ballot in an NLRB-monitored election, but they wouldn't be intimidated when, say, approached by three union guys in the parking lot and urged to sign a unionization card?
In a robust economy, the union-coddling Employee Free Choice Act would drain job creation. In a severely recessed economy, it would be a death knell.
Legislation that would make it vastly easier for unions to organize -- and essentially eliminate secret ballots in the process -- could cost the U.S. economy hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to an analysis by economist Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar. Her work has appeared in the Antitrust Law Journal and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Big Labor's drive to eliminate secret ballots for union elections has united American business in opposition, so labor chiefs are putting on the brass knuckles: The new strategy is to threaten companies with government retaliation if they don't stop lobbying against turning U.S. labor markets into Europe.
We wrote on February 13 about the letter from the labor consortium Change to Win to the Financial Services Roundtable, demanding that banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program money keep quiet about union "card check." To its credit, the banking lobby hasn't backed down. Now Big Labor is escalating, demanding in a February 23 letter to Secretary Timothy Geithner that Treasury muzzle the companies if they won't muzzle themselves.
