Union Bosses Reach for the Brass Ring

Columnist Doug Bandow provides an excellent overview of Big Labor’s agenda which includes, of course, the Card Check Scam bill:

At the top of labor’s agenda is the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, which would deny employees the opportunity to vote before a union takes over their workplace.

Today organized labor represents just 12 percent of all workers and 7.5 percent of private employees. Labor officials blame their woes on the fact that they must win a secret ballot regarding representation whenever 30 percent of workers sign a union card. So organized labor proposes doing away with elections if 50 percent of the workers plus one sign a card.

Unions dislike secret ballots, which protect workers from retaliation for rejecting representation. In contrast, labor organizers find it much easier to mislead and harass workers to sign a union card. Bruce Raynor of the union UNITE HERE says simply: “There’s no need to subject the workers to an election.” Ironically, a Zogby poll found that 84 percent of union members believed in certification elections.

ECFA [SIC – the so-called Employee Free Choice Act] didn’t go anywhere this year. But labor can wait.

The effects of the bill are clear:

. . . Observed Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, ECFA “could trigger a surge in unionization across U.S. industry — and in time, a reversion to the bloated economy that brought America to its knees in the late 1970s and early ‘80s and that today cripples much of European business.”

Alas, many unions today are as interested in politics as economics. They see the political process as the best way to get what they can’t win through negotiation in a free market.

Despite what the union bosses claim, Bandow notes:

The vast majority of Americans — and union members — support holding representation elections, which protect workers and employers alike. Yet organized labor is working overtime to override the public’s interest. If the unions succeed, the public will pay a high price for years to come.