Our Executive Committee Chairman King Banaian has a great post on the logic behind the Minneapolis Star Tribune citing EFCA as a reason not to endorse Ashwin Madia, but ignoring Elwyn Tinklenberg’s equally egregious misstatements on the issue.

In their editorial declining to endorse Democrat Ashwin Madia (a rare thing for this very liberal newspaper), the Minneapolis Star Tribune cited Madia’s dishonesty on EFCA.

As the Strib put it:

At the last debate, Madia was less polished on policy than his two rivals and repeated an error made in his endorsement interview — that the Employee Free Choice Act would not allow a unionization drive to bypass a secret ballot.

Now, we know well how often supporters of EFCA have “repeated an error” about what the bill actually does, namely take away the private ballot rights of Minnesota workers. 

It’s nice to know that honest liberals like George McGovern and, in this case, the Minneapolis Star Tribune are willing to stand up for an old fashioned democratic value, democracy in the workplace.

We hope the Star Tribune and others will join us when we call out politicians who “repeat errors” about EFCA when this bill comes up again early next year.

I suspect Minnesota labor leader Russell Hess is going to get a call from Washington, DC today. That’s because he is way off the reservation when it comes to talking about the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). In fact, he admitted to the Rochester Post-Bulletin that union leaders “almost never stop at [collecting cards from] 30 percent” of a workforce.

Why’s that a big deal? Because unions and their front groups have clung to the notion that EFCA will allow employees to exercise their right to a secret ballot election. To explain that, they say that the bill allows for the use of secret ballots if more than 30%, but less than 50% of a bargaining unit signs union authorization cards.

But as I explained before, unions “almost never” (to quote Hess) go into an election with cards from less than 65% percent of a company’s workforce. And under EFCA, the National Labor Relations Board is specifically barred from holding an election if the union turns in cards from more than 50% of the bargaining unit.

In fact, when I linked to a Teamsters website that explained that the “general policy of the [Teamsters] Airline Division is to file for a representation election only after receiving a 65-percent card return from the eligible voters in a group,” the Teamsters took the website down a few days later. (Thankfully, it’s preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.)

I know this is a lot of numbers, and sometimes labor law can seem complicated, but the bottom line is simple. Unions are selling EFCA on the ground that employees get a “choice” on how they want to unionize, but the bill puts the power in the hands of the union bosses, and they clearly have no intention of calling for elections if EFCA passes. In fact, here’s how AFL-CIO Director of Organizing Stewart Acuff once put it:

“NLRB elections just don’t work,” said Mr. Acuff. “We prefer card check because people can do it off premises, can do it in their homes, can do it without the employer looking over their shoulder.”

Here is an amusing video of Minnesota Democratic Congressional candidate Elwyn Tinklenberg stammering and stuttering in an attempt to justify his support of the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act:

This ad challenging DFL Chairman Brian Melendez and Al Franken to, once and for all, debate us on EFCA, ran today in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The continuing refusal of liberal supporters of EFCA to actually debate the issue stands in stark contrast to former Senator George McGovern’s courage on this issue. 

Senator McGovern, a principled liberal, understands the issue clearly and has the courage to tell the truth.  At a time when our political process could use a few elder statesmen in both parties, it found one in George McGovern.

While we certainly don’t expect Al Franken and Brian Melendez to repudiate their support for EFCA, they could follow the lead of Senator McGovern and reasonably debate the issue in a public forum rather than resort to name calling and legal shenanigans.

For a guy who’s so confident when he’s calling us names and filing frivolous legal complaints, DFL Party Chairman Brian Melendez sure runs away fast when we ask him about his refusal to debate us on EFCA.

I don’t know that I’ve seen a guy with not much to do run away so fast, unless of course, it’s our old friend Ashwin Madia.

Nevertheless, we aren’t going to give up in our efforts to have a substantive debate with Brian Melendez on EFCA.  We may have to put on our running gear, but we’ll keep trying.

Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Brian Melendez has called us names, filed a frivolous legal complaint, and done just about everything he can to avoid debating EFCA.

Following up on our Minnesota State Fair Brian Melendez Cluck Like a Chicken Contest, we sent an appropriate representative to DFL Party Headquarters to issue Chairman Melendez another invitation.  

Hopefully this time, Mr. Melendez will actually show up to defend the proposition supported by Minnesota Democrats Al Franken, Ashwin Madia, and Elwyn Tinklenberg that Minnesota workers don’t deserve a private ballot in workplace elections.

If he doesn’t agree this time, maybe we’ll have to send the whole flock.

Cluck, cluck.

If only it were so easy for us to get straight answers from Elwyn Tinklenberg and Al Franken.  Recently, the AFL-CIO “asked” Al and Elwyn their positions on EFCA.  The two obsequiously obediently willingly provided the AFL-CIO talking points in response.

As with Ashwin Madia earlier this year, the Tinklenberg video isn’t exactly the stuff of ease and spontaneity.  It doesn’t quite meet the level of Madia’s hostage video, though it’s on that continuum.  I especially like the editing job.  Perhaps they had to stop the taping a few times and “remind” Elwyn of his lines.

Here, Elwyn.  Here, boy.