LaborPains.org

The Wall Street Journal’s Kris Maher reports this morning that the White House is set to release an executive order barring larger government contractors from acquiescing to union’s demand for card check recognition.

The executive order would require large government contractors to use secret-ballot elections for union organizing or risk losing government contracts, say people familiar with the order. Though companies typically prefer secret ballots, some are willing to accept card checks to avoid a fight…
Rick Berman runs the Washington-based Center for Union Facts, which opposes card-check campaigns. He said he was aware of the order and called it “long overdue.” He said the order shows “the government is not going to promote the hijacking of democracy through their government-contracting process.”

Carter Wood over at ShopFloor put it best: “And it might be fun to see what stage in labor rhetoric comes after apoplectic.”

Union Free America has voted for its most decertified union of the year award, and the Teamsters are the big winner.  This is obviously a tongue-in-cheek honor by the anti-union organization.  However, the numbers are quite telling.

The judging was based on an analysis of the reports of election results on the National Labor Relations Board’s web site for the period August 2007 through July 2008.  During that time the NLRB conducted 330 decertification elections.  Employees seeking to rid themselves of a union won 201, or 61 percent of them. 

New unions are being certified at a slower rate, and some would argue that this is because unions are unfit and outdated in a free-market, capitalist society that provides government oversight and laws to protect workers.  However, DEcertifications cannot be argued.  Growing numbers of workers that are already IN unions wanting to get OUT is a crystal clear sign that unions aren’t always in workers’ best interests, as Big Labor would have you believe. 

So Big Labor is rallying its loyal Democrat troops from the US House and the Senate to support the bill, and is working at a break-neck pace this election cycle to add pro-union lawmakers so they can pass the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act in the next Congress.  This act will make it easier to unionize by removing the private ballot from union elections, and thus streamlining union organization and effectively legalizing union intimidation of workers through “card-check”.  

Tell your elected officials to vote NO on EFCA.  Workers are getting out of unions at a record pace for a reason, and the unions don’t need to prop their numbers up by promoting intimidation of workers, removing private ballot elections, and certifying new unions that workers neither want nor need.

Is there a blogging equivalent of a double take, because I’m doing that right now.

Maine labor boss Jack McKay is a tricky guy. He has been trying to conflate union leadership elections, with union organization elections in an effort to suggest that unions like secret ballots. But if you know anything about unions, you know there is a huge difference.

To that point, yesterday he held a press conference to release a report titled “Truth and Falsehoods,” in which he said that “Union members in eastern Maine vote by private ballot all the time. Just like the sun rises in the east, this is not some big surprise.”

To prove it, he produced a survey of union leaders that showed that 221 union officials were elected by secret ballot. All of this, he said, shows that our advertisements in Maine are wrong.

But of course, our ads have nothing to do with union leadership elections. It is great that they elect their leaders by secret ballot, but that has nothing to do with our ads. What’s not great, is that McKay, Tom Allen, and the Maine Democratic Party are lying about the true intentions of the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act, which would effectively eliminate secret ballot elections during union organizing campaigns.

Sadly, Bangor Daily News reporter Dawn Gagnon seems to have bought this hook-line-and-sinker. If she’d bothered to so much as call us, I’d have explained McKay’s ruse.

Following on the heels of the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s editorial opposing EFCA, Senator Norm Coleman’s campaign called on Al Franken to “reject his position of supporting legislation that would steal workers’ rights to a secret ballot.”

In a story first reported on the widely-read blog Minnesota Democrats Exposed, Coleman reminded Minnesotans of Franken’s past failures to pay for disability and workers’ comp premiums for his employees.  Coleman Campaign Manager Cullen Sheehan went on say of Franken, “now he wants to violate workers rights even further by taking away their rights to a secret ballot.”

Now, when you’re to the Left of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as is Franken on EFCA, you know you’re out of step.  Norm Coleman has been a stalwart opponent of EFCA, and he’s right to challenge Al Franken to be with the 95% of Minnesotans and the Star Tribune in supporting the private ballot. 

Minnesota, for one reason or another, has quickly become the epicenter of the debate about the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Earlier this summer, the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor party (DFL) Chairman called us liars for suggesting that the bill would eliminate secret ballot elections in workplace unionization elections. We, in turn, challenged him to a public debate on the issue. His response was to file a frivolous lawsuit against us. He lost.

At the center of the debate, was a poorly-informed “Fact Check” segment on WCCO examining the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace’s ad against Al Franken. The DFL and labor unions jumped on the segment, as if WCCO was equivalent to the National Labor Relations Board in interpreting labor law.

Since then, the judge in the DFL’s lawsuit, Democratic Senator George McGovern, the Wall Street Journal, and many, many more have all come out against EFCA’s elimination of secret ballots.

Even the WCCO reporter told a Minnesota media critic that he agrees that the “practical effect” of EFCA is to eliminate secret ballots (why he didn’t include that in his segment, I don’t know).

And now you can add to that long list the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the largest newspaper in Minnesota. Today they editorialized against EFCA, writing:

Its provision allowing unions to bypass a secret ballot with something called a card check is a serious problem. Under the proposed law, unions could bypass a secret ballot if 50 percent of eligible employees signed an authorization form to form a union. It doesn’t make sense: Would you pass a school levy or elect a mayor this way? The proposed card-check system also would invite peer-pressure from union sympathizers and, by making a supporter’s name public, it has the potential to heighten the risk of employer retaliation.

On a personal note, I was born and raised in Minnesota, and I still care a great deal about what happens in the state. That’s why I was so disappointed to see the DFL and others try so hard to pull the wool over the eyes of Minnesotans. I truly hope that the Star-Tribune editorial will wake up Minnesotans to the threats posed by EFCA.

As for Brian Melendez, we’re still waiting for your response to our debate challenge.

Folks, its been one hell of a morning here. First of all, Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus was on CNBC talking about the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act. As I mentioned yesterday, Marcus had an Op-Ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. I think it was safe to say he was definitely fired up and ready to go. Take a watch here:

Speaking of the Wall Street Journal, they are on a roll. The editors have a fantastic lead editorial on “Big Labor’s Comeback.”:

More tellingly, rewriting federal law to promote union organizing is now near the top of the Democratic agenda. The main vehicle is “card check” legislation, which would eliminate the requirement for secret ballots in union elections. Unable to organize workers when employees can vote in privacy, unions want to expose those votes to peer pressure, and inevitably to public intimidation. This would arguably be the biggest change to federal labor law since the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. The Democratic House passed card check last year, and Mr. Obama has pledged his support. With a few more Senators, it might pass.

Card check is merely the start. Next on the agenda is a campaign to repeal “right to work” laws in the 22 U.S. states that have them. Right to work laws allow employees to decide for themselves whether to join or financially support a union. Former Michigan Congressman David Bonior told a union event in Denver on Monday that limiting right to work laws is essential both to lifting union membership and promoting more Democratic political victories. He pointed out that John Kerry didn’t win a single right to work state in 2004, while Al Gore won only one — Iowa — and only by a few thousand votes in 2000.

Atlantic Monthly Senior Editor Clive Crook has a great post on a star-studded brunch hosted by Danny Glover in support of the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act:

The opportunities for intimidation are obvious. (A recent TV ad opposing the measure shows a Mafioso-type heavy offering a worker a card and a pen, as a bunch of thugs stand by.) Advocates of the law say that union-recognition elections are corrupted by employer intimidation, and the so-called card-check method is therefore necessary. Speaking as a worker, and bearing both kinds of undue pressure in mind, I would rather take my chances with a secret ballot. Other pieces of EFCA are less indefensible, and it is a shame to see them tethered to this plain infringement of civil liberty, but the unions want card-check more than all the rest, and the law’s advocates regard the measure as indivisible.

Crook also has a post up on the Financial Times In Depth site echoing similar sentiments:

It is a self-serving demand, and plays badly with the centrists the Democrats need to bring in. It is bad politics, therefore, as well as bad law.

I don’t have anything to add to this developing story.