-By Warner Todd Huston
From www.shopfloor.org
(Hat tip: James Lileks, who uses Xtranormal.com for Retweet Theater.)
The Best Pro-Union Argument a Thug Can Make”
EFCA
A Former Union Man Speaks Out Against EFCA
The easy fraud of the card check process.
Consequences: Wisconsin Loses Jobs/Development Over Card Check
-By Warner Todd Huston
Wisconsin’s Eau Claire County lost 800 full-time jobs and a $50 million investment that was to be rolled out over the next five years because of the Democrat’s Card Check bill. And it wasn’t just a single county in Wisconsin that lost this multi-million dollar development. It was the whole U.S.A. that lost this project.
Thank you Barack Obama. Some help with economic “stimulus” and jobs you are.
Consequences: Wisconsin Loses Jobs/Development Over Card Check”
Unions Harass Employees in Albion, Ind.
-By Warner Todd Huston
It’s the normal tale of union thugs acting like union thugs.
At an auto part plant in Indiana, one woman was threatened because she didn’t want the union. Why was she threatened? Because she and her fellow workers were involved in a card check effort and EVERYONE knew what her vote was. Once the union thugs found out she was against their unionization, they harassed her and threatened her to vote their way.
This sort of thuggery is what President Obama, Congressional Democrats, and union thugs everywhere want to visit upon EVERY U.S. worker.
Lies Used to Support Card Check
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Shop Floor is reporting once again on the lies that the SEIU is using to try and cajole people into thinking that the Wall Street Journal supports the Employee Free Choice Act, today. But now that story has taken a twist. It appears that the House Education and Labor Committee is using the same lie.
Originally the SEIU surgically removed a few words from the WSJ article to make it seem as if the Journal was somehow supporting the EFCA. On what the WSJ said, the SEIU wrote the following:
“The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act,” wrote the WSJ.
Only that isn’t really what the WSJ said at all. Here is the full sentence the Journal wrote in its headlined “Unionize or die” (my bold for emphasis):
“The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter.”
So, in essence the WSJ was saying that the EFCA eliminates the secret ballot in everything but words.
Lies Used to Support Card Check”
Teamster President Denies Secret Ballot is Basic Tenet of Democracy
-By Warner Todd Huston
James P. Hoffa tried his hand at some spin against opponents of the Orwellian named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) last week, denying that a secret ballot is a basic tenet of democracy.
“Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy,” Hoffa is quoted as saying in a Teamsters press release.
How does he justify this idiotic claim? Because, you see, the Soviet Union had a secret ballot “but those weren’t democratic,” Hoffa reminds us. A facile comparison, for sure.
Teamster President Denies Secret Ballot is Basic Tenet of Democracy”
Union’s Card Check is the New Jim Crow Poll Tax
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of the most odious aspects of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is the card check feature. This feature gives unions the “option” to supplant a secret ballot election held among workers for instituting a union with a publicly signed card that announces the voter’s intentions for all to see. In this way, unions clam, “elections” will be easier. Unions also point out that the language of the act still makes provision for the normal secret ballot election should all involved still so desire.
Because the act does not specifically say in plain language that the secret ballot will necessarily be eliminated in all cases, union activists and apologists claim that fears of the elimination of the ages old democratic practice of the secret ballot to assure a fair election isn’t being eliminated. They claim that opponents of this act are merely engaging in hyperbole and fearmongering by claiming the secret ballot will be a thing of the past if the EFCA is passed.
Union’s Card Check is the New Jim Crow Poll Tax”
Former Union Leader Opposes Card Check Bill
-By Warner Todd Huston
The City Wire of Fort Smith, Arkansas, published a piece giving a former union leader space to announce that he opposes the elimination of the secret ballot that is the card check feature of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
His reasoning is spot on with why card check is a bad idea that will materially hurt American workers.
And then there is Neal Catlett, a former president of the union representing workers at Whirlpool’s Fort Smith plant who has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the local union.
Catlett, now retired from Whirlpool, opposes card check. He told The City Wire that he has seen plenty of “nonsense” among Whirlpool leaders and union leaders to know that anything other than a secret ballot will lead to intimidation, coercion and corruption on all sides.
Former Union Leader Opposes Card Check Bill”
Dems to Take up Card Check on Tuesday
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Senate has secret elections for its leaders. The House of Representatives also uses a closed ballot, one not open to public view, for its own members. We all, you and I, have a secret ballot when we vote for president or for our local officials at our local polling place. It’s one of the oldest aspects of the democratic system.
Yet, Democrats want to take that oldest part of the democratic process away from 105 million Americans.
For their support in the last election Democrats are poised to launch an effort to force a payback to Big Unions through Congress, perhaps as early as Tuesday. That payback will be in the form of the woefully misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” — which is neither free nor any choice. In this legislation, unions can dispense with the ages old secret ballot for union members and force them to sign public cards revealing their personal vote to everyone. Naturally, when a voter’s choice is known to everyone, pressure will be greater to conform and the conscience of the union member can easily take a back seat to that of getting along with union bosses.
Dems to Take up Card Check on Tuesday”
Obama Gearing up for Union Payoffs
-By Warner Todd Huston
Last week, president Obama signed several executive orders that he claimed would “level the playing field” for the unions. By that he means, of course, that he expects to take away more power from business and the individual as a payoff to big unions.
As the AP reported, Obama signed three orders that materially affects the business sector.
Require federal contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
Reverse a Bush administration order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
Now, Obama claims this is going to “help” workers, right? So, how does removing information from workers “help” them? As the second order above indicates, Obama has helped union thugs hide the facts from workers so that workers are left in the dark about their rights.
Continue reading “Obama Gearing up for Union Payoffs”
New Labor Sec Claims SHE Can ‘Create’ Jobs?
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Hill is reporting that Obama’s newly minted Labor Secretary was “pressed” on the job losses recently reported by the federal government. Oddly enough, Rep. Hilda Solis (D, CA) imagines she is somehow imbued with the ability to create jobs.
Lawmakers quizzed Solis as to how she could best reverse the jobs decline for a number of sectors in the economy, from healthcare workers to those afflicted with disabilities. One solution the California congresswoman recommended was focusing on creating new “green-collar” jobs. That could include retrofitting government buildings to meet energy-efficiency standards and installing solar panels, among other tasks that would develop America’s alternative energy production.
So, when, exactly, did it become the job of the Sec. of Labor to “create” jobs? What magical powder was she given to sprinkle upon the earth for these jobs to rise forth like a spring daffodil?
Continue reading “New Labor Sec Claims SHE Can ‘Create’ Jobs?”
Democrats Having Trouble With Democrats Over ‘Card Check’?
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Big Labor is finding that it might have a bit less of a lock than it thought on its pet legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Apparently, several southern Democrats — those that live in right to work states — as well as some moderates are signaling Senate Majority leader Harry Reid that they are not as interested in entertaining passage of the act as they were when they knew that the GOP was strong enough to filibuster it and when they had a president that stood ready to veto it.
Instead, union leaders now say they are being told card check won’t happen soon. It seems the Obama team plans to devote its opening months to important issues, like the economy, and has no intention of jumping straight into the mother of all labor brawls. It also seems Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with his new numbers, might not have what it takes to overcome a filibuster. It’s a case study in how quickly a political landscape can change, and how frequently the conventional wisdom is wrong.
Of course this little incident illustrates the insincerity of much of what goes on in the Democratic Party. These guys were happy to appear to vote on this measure when they knew that it wouldn’t pass. This way, they could go to their union thug supporters and pretend they were all for their anti-democratic idea in card check all along. But, when it comes to crunch time and they are finally in a position to vote for the law that they claimed they supported, suddenly they reveal that they were simply lying to their supporters. They really don’t support the bill because it is a jobs killer and it takes away people’s democratic rights.
Continue reading “Democrats Having Trouble With Democrats Over ‘Card Check’?”
Missouri Moves to Make Secret Ballot Required by Law
-By Warner Todd Huston
The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will take away the secret ballot for potential union members and force them to openly declare their preferences for or against a union, causing that worker to be easily open to intimidation by union thugs. This is a law currently in the table in Congress, one that Barack Obama has pledged to push through regardless of how it eliminates one of the oldest democratic rights there is.
But, now Missouri is trying to head off the possible federal enactment of “card check” (the provision that eliminates the secret ballot) by legislating that a secret ballot is protected by state law.
Continue reading “Missouri Moves to Make Secret Ballot Required by Law”
Obama’s First Gift to Unions
– By Warner Todd Huston
Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor is his first gift to labor unions. Hilda Solis is quite a union extremist and has already promised to push the misleadingly named employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) once she takes over her new role in the Obama administration.
A recent Wall Street Journal report reveals that Solis, a California Congressman, has been in the back pocket of unions since she first ran for Congress.
Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor — Hilda Solis — brings impeccable big labor credentials. The California Congresswoman first rode to power with labor backing against a fellow Democrat, has voted with the AFL-CIO 97% of the time, and got three-quarters of her campaign contributions from unions.
But the WS Journal rightfully worries that Solis will also try to gut the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). In recent years the OLMS has tightened financial disclosure rules on the unions, an effort that is responsible in just one case for catching hundreds of thousands of dollars being illicitly spent by Tyrone Freeman, the head of the California office of the Service Employee International Union.
Continue reading “Obama’s First Gift to Unions”
Obama Appointment That Has Rules for Herself, Then Rules for Everyone Else
-By Warner Todd Huston
We have to start this posting with some questions to each of you dear readers out there. Do you like your vote to be secret? Free of coercion? Known only to you? Well, so does Obama’s new appointment for Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis (D-El Monte, CA). She agrees with you and every other democracy-loving citizen that when it comes to her ballot, she wants it to be a secret one. She’s 100% for her own votes remaining secret from prying eyes.
Unfortunately, she also wants to take away that same democratic right from every working American faced with unionization. Solis, you see, has told everyone that will listen that once she becomes Secretary of Labor she will push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and the EFCA will do just that; take away the secret ballot from potential union members. In this she is in tune with Barack Obama because he wants the EFCA passed to pay back the millions that unions pumped into his campaign.
But, in January of last year, Solis, then a Congressman from California, signed a letter criticizing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus for not having a secret vote during their proceedings. Bret Jacobson has the scoop in the L.A.Times:
Continue reading “Obama Appointment That Has Rules for Herself, Then Rules for Everyone Else”