The New Big Three — Job Killer Bills, that is

Manhattan Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth identifies three jobs killer bills, and interestingly Big Labor Bosses are spending forced union dues in support of all three:

Congressional Democratic leaders assert that several major pieces of pending legislation will create jobs. In fact, the bills are more likely to increase unemployment, already close to 10% and probably heading up. Tomorrow’s Labor Department report on employment in September may tell us more.

The “Big Three,” touchstones of a Democratic agenda rooted in the belief that more government equals progress, are the “cap and trade” bill to reduce greenhouse gases, the House and Senate health-care reform bills, and the Employee Free Choice Act. All would, if enacted, cost the country jobs.

The third bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, would allow workers to choose to be represented by unions by checking a card circulated and retained by the union rather than by voting in a secret-ballot election, as required for almost 75 years by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.

A second provision would require the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to appoint arbitration panels to write contracts between newly-unionized workers and firms, if their negotiators fail to agree on an initial collective bargaining contract within 120 days. The arbitrators’ contracts would, by law, hold for two years.

Increasing union power would hurt employment. States where workers cannot be compelled to join unions as a condition of having a job-known as “right to work” states-have created jobs at twice the rate of other states over the past decade. Americans are migrating from the unionized northern states to the primarily non-union South, with the result that the North is losing population and political power.

Fewer than 8% of private-sector workers belong to unions, and large unionized manufacturing industries are going offshore in search of less-expensive labor. Unionized auto companies are shrinking and losing market share to non-union firms because of difference in labor costs.

The country’s economic recovery, weak or strong, will be defined by job creation. Without paychecks families can’t spend. Without families to spend money, businesses cannot sell products, hire workers, and invest. The pending “Big Three” bills could start a vicious circle, one that Congress must avoid.