-By Warner Todd Huston
Yesterday a warning from TheTruthAboutTheEFCA.com was published that, despite the news reports, card check was not a dead issue. Dead, weakened, whatever, at least it looked as if the widening disdain for the card check feature of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was a step in the right direction. But, some are beginning to wonder if card check was merely a tactic all along.
A recent National Review editorial thinks that the loss of card check would be meaningless if its removal from the EFCA meant that passage was easier. After all, the EFCA is far more egregious and economy killing than just the destruction that would be wrought by the card check feature. We’ve said as much here on the blog, as well.
One of the factors that we haven’t much discussed here, though, is the fact that President Obama has stacked his administration with rabidly anti-business and anti-worker’s rights zealots – one of whom said, “federal policy should not acknowledge employees’ ‘choice to remain unrepresented.’” In other words, Obama’s National Labor Rights Board member pick, Craig Becker, is on record saying that if workers don’t want a union, their rights not to belong to one should be summarily ignored by the federal government.
The name of the legislation is straight out of Orwell, but the content is pure Kafka. The worst provision — worse, in fact, than the card-check gambit itself — would allow the National Labor Relations Board to impose contracts on businesses that cannot come to an agreement with a union. If a union enters the picture and the owners of a business are unable to negotiate a satisfactory contract, then the NLRB is empowered to impose “binding arbitration,” meaning that the government will write the contract and force the firm to abide by its terms. This amounts to extortion. President Obama has picked a like-minded lawyer culled from the ranks of the Teamsters to chair the NLRB, and another Obama NLRB pick, Craig Becker, is a labor radical who wrote that “federal policy should not acknowledge employees’ ‘choice to remain unrepresented.’” Given that these are the people who will be making the calls, businesses find themselves in a double-bind: They are at a disadvantage when negotiating with union bosses because the unions have every reason to believe that arbitration will be handled by one of their own. So business owners are left either to negotiate with the unions from a position of weakness or to throw themselves on the mercy of the union-dominated NLRB. Heads the Teamsters win, tails the Teamsters don’t lose.
There is more to take in and this NRO piece makes a well presented case on just how bad other provisions of the EFCA are. It is recommended reading.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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