In Stratham, New Hampshire this weekend, Representative Carol Shea-Porter was asked if she believes that workers have the right to a secret ballot on whether or not their workplace is unionized.  Her support for the EFCA and card check voting gives a pretty clear hint that she doesn’t.  Shea-Porter said this:

… it would also be helpful to go to Educational Labor and look up the committee hearings to find out why they asked for those votes. And I’ll also point out that when you go to town halls here in New Hampshire, we stand up and we count our votes, and there’s a reason that we do that. We have this open… this is not the same as the kind of election for a political office, alright, this is a whole different set of rules here. So, I like our town halls and the way that our town governments function, where people discuss issues in public and vote in public, and I support that.

I think after all I heard, about the difficulty that they have had, that men and women who want to form unions have had, and it’s all on record, so that’s why I recommend you look at that, you realize that for their best protection for all of the workers, it’s good for them to be in, to stand together. And that’s the whole concept of the union anyway: gathering together and working together.

Her answer is meandering, confusing, and well, confused.  First of all, a workplace is not a town hall meeting.  At town hall meetings, citizens who have chosen to live in a certain district get together to talk about legislative issues and the town budget.  After a town hall meeting, it’s uncommon for people from out of town – and not just individuals, but powerful organizations, to come around and influence, intimidate, and coerce the people who are voting on a resolution.

Also, most people don’t earn their living at town hall meetings, and the results of town hall meetings rarely change the fundamental relationship between a citizen and his employer.

For some reason, all these differences evade Representative Shea-Porter.  Perhaps the $260,000 dollars her campaign has received from labor leadership PACs and labor unions have made them easier to ignore.

As U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Merkley attempts to visit one-hundred towns before November, he’s spent a lot of time talking about democracy and his support for “ordinary working people”.

Unfortunately for ordinary working people, talk is about all the support they can expect from Merkley.

Merkley supports the Employee Free Choice Act, a misnamed and deceptive piece of legislation that takes away workers’ right to a private ballot in the workplace regarding whether they want to join a union.

The current system is fair and allows unions to collect signatures from workers to determine whether they want to unionize. Once the union has approval from 30 percent of the workers, an election is called for by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency created to protect workers. The workers then vote by private ballot, the same basic American right we all have when we go to vote for a candidate, say for U.S. Senate.

Under the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act however, the NLRB would be effectively abolished and workers would be given a contract to sign by union organizers. These contracts are collected by union organizers. Once unions have 51% of the workers’ signatures on the dotted line, they are recognized as the employees’ representation and can negotiate with small business owners over wages, benefits and other important aspects of their jobs.

How secure would you feel if an organization that benefits from you signing up also hands out and collects the contracts that say whether or not you want to join? The checks and balances of the system are taken away by the Employee Free Choice Act.

And what kind of democracy is it when your vote isn’t held private? Workers would be open to intimidation, coercion and even threats by union organizers and fellow workers in an attempt to “persuade” them to sign these cards.

Unions like to talk about increased benefits or higher wages, but they won’t tell workers that union bosses are paying themselves six-figure salaries from members’ dues, that hundreds of union officials have been convicted of racketeering in the past five years or that unions’ inflexibility has played a role in driving many companies into bankruptcy, costing those same workers their jobs.

They also don’t talk about the tens of millions of dollars they collect in dues that go to politicians like Merkley who turn around and pass legislation that makes it easier for unions to get more members and therefore increase the dues they take from ordinary working people. This vicious cycle ensures that politicians like Merkley continue to receive millions in financial support while ordinary working people struggle to put food on the table and gas in their cars and trucks.

Merkley and his supporters claim that unions create a better working environment, more job security and higher wages. The real question we should be asking is for whom: Workers or the union bosses and politicians like Jeff Merkley?

Merkley claims to stand up for ordinary working people, but his actions and his support of the Employee Free Choice Act say that he’s really looking out for himself.

Maine ABC board member Doug Newman has a great op-ed in today’s Bangor Daily News exposing Tom Allen’s support for the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act:

Today, workers can organize into a union if a majority of those workers decide, through a private ballot vote, to do so. This process allows workers to vote their conscience in private without facing coercion or retribution from either union bosses or management. The Employee Free Choice Act would gut that process. Instead, workers would have to sign a card distributed by paid union organizers to determine whether or not to organize. This means that everyone can quickly determine who did or did not sign the card.

Al Franken has rationalized his support for the Employee Free Choice Act by smearing tens of thousands of honest, hard working Minnesota business owners. Franken alleges that the Senate must pass EFCA and take away the private ballot from Minnesotans deciding whether to unionize their workplace because of “intimidation.”

What proof does Franken present to defend such a baseless claim? What businesses does Franken cite as evidence that we have too much democracy in Minnesota workplaces and that, therefore, we must take away the private ballot?

You get the picture.

In fact, according to the National Labor Relations Board’s own data, employers wrongly fire employees just 2.7 percent of elections.

As usual, Franken is trying to change the subject and hide the fact that his 21 union endorsements and hundreds of thousands in big money campaign contributions are causing him to throw Minnesota workers under the bus.

The private ballot right enjoys the support of 95% of Minnesota workers. In order to justify his opposition to something so overwhelmingly popular, Franken has come up with yet another wild and outlandish story, similar to the explanations about his tax and workers’ compensation problems.

It’s time for Al Franken to stop making baseless charges that he can’t back up. It’s time for Al Franken to put Minnesota workers ahead of the Washington special interests. Most of all, it’s time for Al Franken to tell the truth.

On Monday, Denver Newsradio 850 KOA talk show host Mike Rosen and former Colorado Governor Bill Owens fielded a call asking about the governor’s viewpoints on the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act.

Owens shares an interesting story of a Teamster union representative agreeing with him on the un-democratic nature of the law and his belief that it is inevitably going to pass into law. They also really drive home the point that it is a huge issue in the upcoming senate race between sitting Congressman Mark Udall and former Congressman Bob Shaffer.

Coloradans for Employee Freedom couldn’t agree more! Udall cosponsored and voted for EFCA in the House in 2007, and would be a swing vote if elected to the Senate in current Republican Senator Wayne Allard’s stead.

Listen to the segment here

Jeanne Shaheen continues to refuse to answer a very simple question: do workers have the right to a secret ballot when a labor organizer tries to unionize their shop?  It’s no surprise that she’s unable to give a straight answer as her position is, to most Americans, completely untenable.

Labor union bosses have decided to insert themselves into business yet again–this time they are trying to dictate where supermarkets are located. The Retail Worker Department Store/United Food and Commercial Workers union are going so far as to advocate for legislation that promotes incentives, such as tax breaks, for locating supermarkets in specific neighborhoods.

The union is pushing for legislation that would promote development of supermarkets in underserved city neighborhoods…The union supports a program of incentives and tax breaks to encourage development of supermarkets.

Businesses select the locations of their stores based on several factors, among them the community’s ability to generate sufficient profits to off-set the costs of being located in a neighborhood. Businesses must also consider their employees–if a store has to close due to insolvency workers lose their jobs. Let’s hope this union-backed legislation and its tax breaks are right for the workers in these underserved neighborhoods.

Retired workers from the Communications Workers of America union have paid their dues (both literally and figuratively) and are now gearing up for their next job: political operative. A CWA VP, Ralph Maly, explains that CWA retirees are crucial to the passage of the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act not only for their potential for grassroots outreach, but also as voters:

There is no question in my mind that retirees play a critical role in getting the Employee Free Choice Act and a national health care policy passed in Congress. Retirees make things happen and their continued support is a must for the survival of the labor movement.

Apparently your obligations to your union do not end with your retirement.