Right to Work Blog

Despite not yet achieving a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (Minnesota, Georgia and Alaska election results are still awaiting finality), Big Union activists are pushing hard to get their Card Check Scam Bill enacted into law.

The Investor’s Business Daily takes a look at their efforts:

When the dust settled after the election last week, the Democrats fell just short of the 60-vote, filibuster-proof Senate majority they wanted. That’s put a question mark over one of the party’s most controversial initiatives: the Employee Free Choice Act.

Democrats, including President-elect Barack Obama, campaigned hard for the pro-union legislation, also known as “card check.” Big Labor, which threw its support behind the party, wants it badly. But without a filibuster-proof majority, its chances are slim.

That’s prompted rumors in Washington that unions might accept putting card check aside in favor of pushing issues like binding arbitration. Big Labor publicly scoffs at such talk.

AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuels said the card check side can count on 58 votes, just two votes short of the number needed to overcome a filibuster.

But three Senate races remain unresolved and some senators may flip, Samuels says. So they see no reason not to push for a vote.

“Business may be looking for a way out of this debate . . . because of the election results,” he said. “But this is a new president, a new Congress, and we hope to bring more Republicans on board.”

He conceded, though, that a Senate vote may have to wait until after Obama’s first 100 days.

. . . Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, which opposes unions, cited a Slate column by William Gould, a NLRB chairman under President Clinton, that advocated a compromise as evidence that Big Labor may take that option.

“The real power for organized labor comes in the forced arbitration,” Mix said. “The secret ballot provision (i.e., card check) is a political loser. They know that. So it’s trade bait for them.”

Brian Johnson, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, which opposes card check, says some activists fear business groups may accept a compromise.

“There is a scary idea that perhaps the chamber and other business groups might squish,” said Johnson, who added: “According to the chamber and people I’ve talked to, no, they’re still vehemently opposed.”

Robert Borosage, co-director of the labor-backed Campaign for American Future, says the anti-card-check forces are missing the point. Unions believe Democrats’ sweeping win last week means they have a mandate that includes card check.

John Lott takes an insightful look at the Card Check Scam:

WOULD you like elections without secret ballots? To most Americans, the notion is absurd. But, if Barack Obama becomes president, secret ballots seem destined to end for at least one type of election: union certifications.

The reasons for secret ballots are obvious. Not everyone feels comfortable making his or her political positions public; many would rather vote without fear of offending or angering someone else. Secret balloting essentially ended an old abuse, vote buying, in US elections.

Yet Obama promises to sign into law the so-called Employee Free Choice Act - which would end secret-ballot elections when it comes to unionization of workplaces.

Unionization is now a two-step process: When 50 percent of workers in a company sign statements requesting a unionization vote, that merely sets up a second stage, where workers vote by secret ballot on whether to unionize. Under the “card-check” system, however, unionization would be certified as soon as half the workers had signed cards stating that they favor union representation.

In other words, a worker can now placate union supporters by signing a statement saying he wants a union, but then vote the other way when protected by the secrecy of the voting booth.

Unions now win about 60 percent of certification elections. The rules change would not only make that 100 percent - adding 500-plus new unionized shops a year - but also ensure that unions seek many more certifications. You can see why the AFL-CIO calls the Employee Free Choice Act its “million-member mobilization.”

Unions are desperate to increase membership, which has been falling for decades - from 35 percent of the private-sector workforce in the 1950s to 8.2 percent in 2007.

Big Labor is making an all-out push to get this passed, having budgeted $360 million on this year’s election, $200 million more than in 2004. The Service Employees International Union alone is spending $75 million this year - and committed to making 10 million phone calls to Congress early next year to ensure the bill gets enacted.

Obama claims that strengthening unions is good because unions will “lift up the middle-class in this country once more.” If so, why are these very people voting against unions?

In fact, unionization virtually always raises some workers’ pay at the expense of others. (In particular, companies typically have to compensate for the higher payroll costs by using fewer employees.) They also equalize wages within jobs - preventing harder working, more productive employees from earning more than less productive ones.

And those aren’t the only problems. Protecting teachers unions from competition comes at the expense of students. Protecting workers from trade competition comes at the expense of customers and even other workers. (If you protect steel workers from competition, for example, the price of US-made cars rises relative to foreign-made ones.)

Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, has broken with his own party over card-check. In an ad opposing the bill, he says, “It is hard to believe that any politician would agree to a law denying millions of employees a right to a private vote.” McGovern is so concerned that he has let the ad be targeted against Democrats nationally as well as in seven states with close Senate races.

Obama may feel that card-check will help US workers, or he may simply believe he needs to reward Big Labor for its support. Either way, ending secret-ballot union votes is guaranteed to make the country - and most workers - poorer.

Will Obama cash Big Labor’s chit?

Big Labor bosses are ready to ram through their power-grabbing agenda with the help of a new crop of congressional water carriers — and they are not hiding their demands. Just read the headlines: “After Push for Obama, Unions Seek New Rules” or “Labor Wants Obama to Take on Big Fight,” and even “With strengthened hand on the Hill, liberal lobbies dreaming of big gains.”

There is no arguing that the Big Labor bosses want Congress to give them the power to unionize millions of Americans through new coercive tactics.

The Hill reports:

Labor groups spent heavily on the election in key battleground states and are planning to push for a series of economic changes, including . . . their top priority: passing the [Card Check Forced Unionism Bill] Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), legislation that they argue would make it easier for employees to form a union. . . .

“The gains obviously increase our chances of passing EFCA,” said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, at a post-election briefing. “We’re strengthened. We have more votes in the Senate and the House.”

The Wall Street Journal, without a hint of a suggestion of a quid pro quo, reports:

After unions spent more than $400 million on the election and mounted massive voter-turnout efforts for Mr. Obama, they’re inclined to push for bringing the Employee Free Choice Act up for a vote early next year, believing they have a narrow window to get it passed. . . .

At the top of labor’s wish list is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it harder for companies to fight union-organizing drives.

“It is the most important issue that we have,” said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO.

It is also the most important issue we have. Americans should not be forced to join a union and pay union dues as a condition of employment. Period.

Despite his support for Right to Work, John McCain missed a serious opportunity to discuss Barack Obama’s support for elimination of the secret ballot election for workers, according to Shikha Dalmia, writing for Forbes magazine:

Perhaps Republicans deserve to lose this election–but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to win. It is not clear, however, that the McCain campaign agrees. How else to explain its failure to alert voters of frightening liberal ideas such as “card check” that are bound to be enacted if Democrats sweep into the White House and Congress?

Card check–the most radical revision of labor law since 1935–would allow unions to do away with secret ballots, a fundamental right in a democracy, and unionize companies simply by coaxing, cajoling or coercing a majority of workers into signing a card. It came alarmingly close to being enacted last year when the House overwhelmingly passed the fraudulently named Employee Free Choice Act. The Republican minority in the Senate eventually filibustered the legislation.

But this last line of defense will crumple if Democrats gain a super-majority in the Senate. Also, Sen. Barack Obama–who was one of the co-sponsors of the legislation–has already declared that he will make card check “the law of the land when I’m president of the United States.” No surprise then that Big Labor is pumping close to $400 million to elect him and his fellow Democrats–likely the single largest buying spree ever by an interest group.

But card check will be bad for workers and businesses. And why McCain is not shouting this from the rooftops is one of the big mysteries of his campaign.

Unions have been losing membership steadily since their heyday in the 1950s when nearly 35% of the American workforce belonged to a union, compared with 7.5% today. Indeed, even as the economy added more than 9.5 million jobs between 1999 and 2006, unions lost more than 1 million members.

One big reason is that workers simply don’t believe that handing over 1% to 2% of their wages in mandatory union dues is worth the services that Big Labor offers. Their skepticism is not unjustified. A 2002 study by the Bureau of National Affairs found that, after adjusting for cost-of-living, private sector workers in the 10 least unionized states earned $1,600 more annually than workers in the 10 most heavily unionized states. What’s more, between 1992 and 2002, the less unionized states generated twice as many nonfarm jobs–with better benefits–than more unionized states.

But instead of enticing reluctant workers by offering better prices or services–as a club losing membership would do–unions want to effectively coerce them by taking away their right to a fair vote. Furthermore, Big Labor wants to eliminate the elections required to form a union, while keeping them for when workers want to remove an existing union. This is a flagrant double-standard designed to turn workers into union hostages!

Workers understand the dangers of card check, which is why 78% of union members support keeping the current secret ballot system, according to a 2004 Zogby survey conducted for the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Workers won’t be the only losers under card check, however. Non-unionized companies in the manufacturing sector will confront new union drives. Even industries such as hospitals and hotels that never imagined they would be vulnerable to unionization would potentially become union shops. But the grand prize that Big Labor is coveting is the retail sector–and not just big-box stores like Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) and Home Depot (nyse: HD - news - people ), but also medium-sized establishments like pharmacies and grocery stores.

Companies’ biggest fear is that unions will foist rigid workplace rules upon them–just as they did on the former Big Three automakers–preventing them from quickly redeploying their workforce in response to shifting market conditions, crimping their productivity and global competitiveness.

But there is an even deeper problem that card check will exacerbate: There has been a major shift in the mentality of the modern-day labor movement, which now regards political advocacy as its main role rather than workplace representation. Witness, for instance, its advocacy of nationalized health care.

Yet it is far from clear if union rank-and-file approve of this shift. Indeed, the 2004 Mackinac Center poll found that 43% of union members believed not enough union funds were spent on “efforts to secure better wages, benefits and working conditions.”

With card check, however, Big Labor will get more money and added flexibility to further ignore the wishes of its rank-and-file and pursue its political agenda.

McCain could have used his own opposition to card check to expose the joint agenda of Big Labor and the Democrats while wooing ordinary, blue-collar voters. That he didn’t do so might be one of the biggest missed opportunities of his campaign.

Barbara Comstock weighs in on the Card Check Scam Bill. Key paragraph:

As is too often the case with Congress, the best explanation for the support for this bill is to “follow the money.” Big Labor bosses are at the top for special-interest funding of the presidential and competitive Senate races this year and this is their No. 1 legislative priority. The $400 million-plus they are investing in this election is designed to get a Senate that will pass the bill and a president who will sign it. (They already have enough House votes.) But the secret ballot should not be for sale at any price.

With America in an economic downturn and big labor poised to make substantial electoral gains, it is critical to understand their agenda and the impact it will have on economic growth. National Right to Work President Mark Mix has done just that in the Wall Street Journal.

Revisionist historians like to claim that it was President Roosevelt’s policies that “led us from the great Depression.” But most economists now understand his policies actually prolonged it by over seven years. Part of the Roosevelt plan was enactment of the Wagner Act, a measure that authorized union officials to seek and obtain the power to act as the exclusive (that is, the monopoly) bargaining agent over all the front-line employees, including union nonmembers as well as members, in a unionized workplace.

Mix examines the history:

As Amity Shlaes observed in her recent history of the Great Depression, “The Forgotten Man,” within a few months after the Wagner Act was upheld, industrial production began to plummet and “the jobs started to disappear, with unemployment moving back to 1931 levels,” even as the number of workers under union control was “growing astoundingly.”

Given the reality of unions in the workplace, the law meant that efficiency and profitability were compromised, by forcing employers to equally reward their most productive and least productive employees. Therefore subsequent wage increases for some workers led to widespread job losses.

Pre-Depression-era growth and prosperity did not return to the private sector until the early 1950s, when the spread of state right-to-work laws prohibiting forced union membership and dues greatly reduced the detrimental effects of the Wagner Act.

The U.S. has just experienced another stock market crash, and Barack Obama, the candidate now favored to be the next president, is in favor of what amounts to a new Wagner Act.

If the mislabeled “Employee Free Choice Act,” becomes law, it will likely have a similar effect on the economy as the original Wagner Act, transforming what could have been a recovery into a lengthy, deep recession, or worse.

The bill would greatly facilitate organization in workplaces by effectively eliminating secret ballot elections, allowing unions to become exclusive bargaining agents when a majority of the workers sign a card indicating they want a union — before they’ve heard a word from their employer about the potential downside of unionization.

The cards themselves may be signed under duress. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) czar Andy Stern predicts that its enactment would cause unions to “grow by 1.5 million members a year, not just for five years but for 10 to 15 straight years.”

Sen. Obama voted for one version of the card-check bill in June 2007 and pledged to Big Labor that he will push for enactment as president. With a handful of pickups he will have a filibuster-proof majority in the next Senate, and can make good his pledge.

“I owe those unions,” Mr. Obama explained in his 2006 political memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.” “When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way . . .”

John McCain voted against card-check legislation in 2007, and has pledged to veto such legislation as president. He also supports a national right-to-work law that would repeal all current federal labor law provisions authorizing forced union dues and fees. Unfortunately, his campaign has done little to alert the nation to the dangers of the card-check bill.

Before they cast their votes, the American people ought to be aware of Mr. Obama’s commitment to the passage of a new Wagner Act, and of what the economic consequences of such a law are almost certain to be.

History tends to repeat itself. In the question of the upcoming Big Labor power grab, the question is — will you let it?

With polls suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama will become the next President of the United States, more and more commentators are beginning to examine the impact Obama’s election will have on the legislative agenda of the Big Labor bosses. The Wall Street Journal’s take:

Big Labor is hoping to have a big election next Tuesday, with a goal of building a majority to rewrite negotiating rules between unions and management. Though it has received little media attention, Barack Obama’s pro-union agenda is the most ambitious in decades and has a real prospect of becoming law. His stated goal is to “strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions” by doing the following:

- Mr. Obama is a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections. Unions would be certified to negotiate pay, benefits and work rules simply by collecting signed “union authorization cards” from a majority of employees at a work site. The law passed the House in 2007 but didn’t come up for a Senate vote.

Under current law, union organizers and management both have the opportunity to present the pros and cons of forming a union. A secret employee vote is then held. Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, unions would be the sole provider of information to the employee, and the worker’s decision whether to organize would no longer be private.

Unions say current law favors management, which can stall to a point where workers lose interest in organizing. But the median number of days between filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and holding an election has actually fallen over the past two decades. In 2007, more than 1,500 such elections were held, and unions won 54% of them, the same win rate of the early 1970s.

- Another labor-friendly provision of the Employee Free Choice Act is mandatory arbitration. Under current law, labor and management are required to bargain in good faith but aren’t obliged to reach an agreement. Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, if the parties can’t settle on a contract within 120 days, the dispute goes to an arbitration panel which can impose a contract that is binding for two years.
As a practical matter, contracts typically involve dozens of provisions dealing with wages as well as seniority, grievances, overtime, transfers and promotions. Rarely is this accomplished in four months. The provision would notably shift bargaining power to unions, which would have an incentive to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand.

- Mr. Obama also supports legislation to reverse the NLRB’s “Kentucky River” ruling last year, which fleshed out the definition of a supervisor for the purposes of organizing. Unions usually prefer a narrow definition of management, because it increases the number of people potentially under their control. Conversely, labor has worked to expand the definition of “employee” to include everyone from temp workers to graduate-student teaching assistants.

- The Democrat also wants to bar companies from replacing striking workers — a right that management has held for some 70 years. Unions made a similar push in the early 1990s, and a bill passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. Mr. Clinton issued an executive order that would have ended the provision for federal contractors. It was struck down in federal court. Mr. Clinton then tried to get the NLRB to make it more difficult to replace striking workers. The courts overturned that too. Mr. Obama says he will “work to ban the provision,” but hasn’t provided specifics.

- Mr. Obama supports the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act and has said he’d push for its enactment as president. The bill, which passed the House last year and already has 60 votes in the Senate, would force state and local governments to recognize union leaders as the exclusive bargaining agent for police, firefighters and other first responders. More than half of the states would have to change their laws. Thousands of public safety officers would no longer be able to negotiate directly with their employers on their own behalf.

- Last year Congress raised the minimum wage, which is set to rise to $7.25 an hour next year from the current $6.55. But Mr. Obama wants to raise it again, to $9.50 per hour by 2011, and index it for inflation. Mr. Obama says further increases are necessary so that “full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.” According to Census data, less than 1% of workers over 25 are earning the minimum. And rather than family heads or full-time workers, they tend to be young single adults, teenagers living at home or spouses providing a second income.
John McCain has not made labor issues a major part of his campaign, but he opposes both the Employee Free Choice Act and the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act. The Republican has also gone on the record in support of national right-to-work legislation that would repeal all current federal laws that authorize the firing of employees for refusing to join or pay dues to a union. Some 22 states currently have right-to-work laws, which Mr. Obama opposes.

Smelling blood — and a chance for another vote to end employee secret ballot elections — union bosses in Indiana are bankrolling the upstart campaign of Michael Montagano against incumbent Mark Souder.

Souder, who has called the Card Check Scam Bill a license to intimidate workers, is under attack by Montagano whose campaign is funded almost exclusively by Big Labor money. The Journal Gazette reports that Big Labor has:

. . . contributed more than $130,000 to Montagano’s campaign operation – $20 of every $100 in total donations; 75 percent of all the political action committee money.

It’s more cash than unions donated to Souder’s last six challengers combined.

With polls showing that Sen. Barack Obama is likely to become the next President of the United States, the question is how fast he tries to repay his Big Labor benefactors by pushing for enactment of the coercive Card Check Scam Bill.

Peter Kirsanow, writing for the National Review blog “The Corner” believes action on the bill will start soon after inauguration day. “Smart money says that some form of EFCA [Employee Free Choice Act] will be one of the first bills Obama signs — perhaps as early as February,” Kirsanow writes.

We can’t disagree. Be prepared for a swift and ongoing attack on workers’ rights by the new Congress and new President.