Big Labor Hidden Agenda

Diane Furchtgott-Roth looks behind the rhetoric of the Card Check Forced Unionism bill:

Under binding arbitration, if firms and newly-organized unions cannot agree on their first collective bargaining contract within 120 days, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a government agency headed by a political appointee, would set up arbitration panels to craft two-year contracts. Neither the union nor the employer would have an opportunity to choose any members of the panel, and the Mediation Service would write the regulations. 

Unions want mandatory arbitration because they believe the threat of arbitration, followed by arbitration itself, will force employers to pay better compensation packages. That will help them recruit more members, providing a fresh infusion of funds for daily operations as well as for failing pension plans.
…With fewer workers joining unions, the collectively-bargained multiemployer pension funds are characterized by an increasing number of retirees supported by fewer younger workers. Many systems are typical Ponzi schemes, with new contributions paid out in benefits rather than being saved for contributors’ retirement.

Union pension funds can only survive through new contributions. That’s why unions will do anything to raise participant levels-including taking away secret ballots and forcing workers into underfunded pension plans.

America’s workers should not have to give up secure retirements in the name of a compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act. Just as workers deserve secret ballots in union elections, they also deserve the right to consider judiciously their labor contracts, and walk away from those that they deem unfair.