Time to Fight

With Sen. Harry Reid prepared to bring the Card Check Scam Bill to the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has denounced the bill in uncertain terms:

Liberals in Congress have introduced the “Employee Free Choice Act of 2007,” and it’s impossible to think of a bill that is more deceptively named. Calling it the “Employee Intimidation Act” would be better.

Rather than enable employees’ free choice, the bill would eliminate it — by ending the requirement that workers voting on whether to unionize or not do so by secret ballot. That rule is currently enforced by a government agency, the National Labor Relations Board. Instead, workers would have to declare their vote publicly — under the glare of their employer and their potential union bosses.

Thankfully, he’s not alone. It is expected that all Republicans in the Senate except, perhaps, Sen. Arlen Specter will oppose the Scam Bill.

But Senate Republicans aren’t alone in fighting the big labor give-away. Presidential candidate Fred Thompson has joined the fight:

This week, though, the unions are going to try something that could reverse their long decline. The Senate will vote on a measure the House has already passed that would do away with secret ballots on votes to unionize. This would allow union officials to visit individual workers separately to persuade them to sign a card in favor of the union. Given the rather colorful history of some labor unions, it’s not hard to understand why so many people think this is a very bad idea.

Nevertheless, the current [C]ongress may in fact pass it. Unions give a lot of their members’– and nonmembers’– dues to political candidates, and they’re really good at providing free labor to campaigns. So they have a lot of influence in certain parts of [C]ongress. That may explain, for example, why the House Appropriations Committee is apparently planning to cut the budget of the Office of Labor Management Services — the office that investigates illegalities by unions.

Let me restate the obvious. In America, we need the right to join a union. We also need the right not to join a union.