‘Get the “Card-Check” Bill Passed — or Else’

Big Labor Reminds Majority Leader Reid He Must Deliver on S.560

(Source: January 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

Neither the “Card-Check” Forced Unionism Bill’s extreme unpopularity with the public nor the obvious reluctance of several members of his own caucus on Capitol Hill to vote for this legislation can excuse Majority Leader Harry Reid from his obligation to ram it through the U.S. Senate. 

That’s the message Big Labor is sending to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as the second session of the 111th U.S. Congress gets underway this month.

Last year, Mr. Reid tried early in the session to move the “card-check” bill, but, after Americans opposed to the measure inundated Senate offices with phone calls and mail, he backed off.

Mr. Reid then vowed the Senate would take up the “card-check” bill, S.560, as soon as it had fulfilled President Obama’s request of adopting legislation reworking America’s $2.5 trillion-a-year health-care system.

And on Christmas Eve, the Senate rubber-stamped H.R. 3590, Mr. Reid’s version of ObamaCare, in a straight party-line vote.

Furthermore, Mr. Reid’s U.S. House counterpart, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has made it clear she expects the Senate to act on S.560 before the House votes on H.R.1409, the lower chamber’s version of the “card-check” scheme.

Therefore, top union bosses contend, this winter Mr. Reid has no choice but to schedule a vote on S.560 or a very similar bill. And he also needs to find a way, as he did with the highly unpopular H.R.3590, to get a gussied-up S.560 adopted through legislative arm-twisting and horse-trading.

“Anything short of that,” warned Washington Post columnist and union-boss confidante Harold Meyerson in a column late last month, and Big Labor’s “anger will take a toll on the Democrats’ electoral prospects” in 2010.

‘Plan B’ Would Advance S.560’s Pro-Forced Unionism Ends Through Alternative Means

The undisguised aim of S.560 is to help Big Labor force millions of additional workers, union members and nonmembers alike, to accept a union as their “exclusive” (monopoly) bargaining agent in their dealings with their employer.

A major provision in this legislation, cynically mislabeled by proponents as the “Employee Free Choice Act,” would accomplish this goal by effectively ending secret-ballot elections in union organizing campaigns.

However, this “card-check” provision is so flagrantly anti-worker and unpopular with the public that S.560 lead sponsor Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has apparently concluded that the bill in its current form may be too difficult to get through the Senate.

That’s why Mr. Harkin and other Big Labor senators have worked behind the scenes to concoct a less obviously sinister “Plan B” that would accomplish the same forced-unionism objectives of S.560 through somewhat different means.

This Is No Time For Right to Work Supporters To Let Their Guard Down

Top union bosses are reluctantly supportive of “Plan B” because they understand it will promote forced unionism, to virtually the same extent as S.560, by rewriting workplace election rules to tilt them even more steeply in union organizers’ favor.

“When Big Labor bosses who collectively pour well over a billion dollars, mostly forced-dues money, into federal election campaigns every two years demand something, Harry Reid will do everything he can to give it to them,” warned National Right to Work Committee Vice President Matthew Leen.

“This winter will be very dangerous for freedom-loving citizens. 

“Andy Stern, chief of the Service Employees International Union and probably the most powerful union boss in America today, is openly cooperating with Harry Reid and Tom Harkin in their efforts to concoct a ‘Plan B’ that can get through the Senate.

“Only ever-intensifying heat from pro-Right to Work senators can convince the same Senate fence sitters who ultimately helped Mr. Reid ram through ObamaCare, senators like Blanche Lincoln [D-Ark.] and Byron Dorgan [D-N.D.], not to follow the same routine with S.560 or ‘Plan B.’

“I urge Right to Work members and supporters in all 50 states, especially constituents of ‘swing’ votes like Ms. Lincoln and Mr. Dorgan, to keep contacting their senators through the Capitol Hill switchboard, 202-224-3121.

“Let them know you want and expect them to oppose S.560 and any similar pro-forced unionism legislation on all votes.”