‘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.

Obama Team: More Forced Unionism ‘Needed’

Obama Team: More Forced Unionism ‘Needed’

Massive Union Job Losses Make Case For ‘Card-Check’ Legislation? (Source: February 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) On January 22, the U.S. Labor Department issued a report providing a snapshot, in numbers, of some of the latest damage wrought to employees, employers, and the economy as a whole by government-imposed union monopoly bargaining. The report shows that, in one major business sector after another, the jobs of workers who labor under forced unionism were far more likely to be destroyed during the 2008-2009 recession than were the jobs of union-free workers. In the hard-hit telecommunications sector, for example, the number of jobs subject to union monopoly bargaining plummeted by 20.7% last year, over four times the decline for union-free jobs. Unionized construction jobs plunged by 20.0%. Over the same period, union-free construction jobs fell by 12.4%. 'These Numbers Show a Need For Congress to Pass’ S.560/H.R.1409 The number of Big Labor-controlled manufacturing jobs declined by 14.3%, nearly four percentage points more than the decline for union-free jobs in manufacturing. Overall, unionized private-sector employment sank by 9.4% last year, a decline more than double the total private-sector job loss of 4.4%.