As I said last week, EFCA is still a bad piece of legislation even with the Democrats announcing that they will drop card check. There have been a number of op-eds and editorials making the case against EFCA.
The Eagle-Tribune in MA: “EFCA still bad news, even post compromise”
“The Employee Free Choice Act was a poor policy when it was reintroduced in Congress this spring. It’s still a bad idea now, when the economy is just beginning to show signs of recovery.”
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “Card (check) trick”
“JUST WHEN YOU might have thought the secret ballot was safe when it comes to elections over whether to unionize American workplaces . . . the union bosses are back with a “compromise” that sounds all too much like their original power grab. … [T]HE REAL joker in the deck is the provision in the bill that would have a federal arbitrator set the terms of the next contract between management and a new union if they can’t come to terms within 90 days”
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “EFCA Still Stinks.”
“And worst of all, still contained in this putrid pandering to unions is binding arbitration. If both sides don’t reach agreement by a set time, a third-party government arbitrator would set salaries and benefits. Corporations might as well turn over the keys to their corporate offices.What’s being retooled, and not rejected, in Congress makes this union-toadying legislation no less wretched.”
Steven J. Law at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce via cbsnews.com: “Why Card Check “Lite” Is A Non-Starter.”
But the real “poison pill” of forced government arbitration is the way it would spread union pension fund financial problems to healthy companies and workers. Many union-run pension plans are headed toward insolvency because of risky real estate deals and politicized investing. The Card Check bill would empower government arbitrators to force newly-unionized employers into these pensions – putting them on the hook for huge funding shortfalls. Under pension law, a business owner could be stuck paying benefits to people who never worked for them.And because pension liabilities are included on company balance sheets, a previously healthy firm could have its credit rating ruined overnight by being dumped into a collapsing union pension.