Obama and the EFCA

[jmichna]

Obama's Positions - Labor Rights

From Wikipedia (What can I say? Wiki was convenient, and Obamanoids use it constantly as a reference material source.)

Labor rights
Obama supports the bi-partisan Employee Free Choice Act, which passed the House of Representatives in 2007, but failed to pass the Senate. Obama promises to sign the EFCA into law if he is elected President. His political rival, John McCain opposes the EFCA and proposed to outlaw card check union signature drives with a GOP sponsored bill, the Secret Ballot Protection Act.[7]

What is the Employee Free Choice Act, you might ask? it sounds like it would be good! Free choice for Employees!!!

From Wikipedia:

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is proposed legislation of the United States which aims to "amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes."[1] Under current labor law, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board will certify a union as the exclusive representative of employees if it is elected by either a majority signature drive, the card check process, or by secret ballot NLRB election, which is held if more than 30% of employees in a bargaining unit sign statements asking for representation by a union. Under the EFCA, an employer would no longer have the opportunity to demand a secret ballot election when a majority of employees have signed union cards and there is no evidence of illegal coercion. In addition, if the union and employer cannot agree upon the terms of a first collective bargaining contract within 90 days, either party can request federal mediation, which could lead to binding arbitration if an agreement still cannot be reached after an additional 30 days. Finally, the Act would provide for liquidated damages of two times back pay if employers were found to have unlawfully terminated pro-union employees.

Read that bolded portion carefully... think about what it means: No longer will a worker's vote be cast in secret. You can bet the sun will rise tomorrow on Union Organizers demanding ballots cast so that they see how each worker casts their decision. Can you say "intimidation"?

Representative John Kline (R-MN) has stated:
“ It is beyond me how one can possibly claim that a system whereby everyone – your employer, your union organizer, and your co-workers – knows exactly how you vote on the issue of unionization gives an employee 'free choice.... It seems pretty clear to me that the only way to ensure that a worker is 'free to choose' is to ensure that there's a private ballot, so that no one knows how you voted. I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker's democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it 'Employee Free Choice.'[5]

Now read Thomas Sowells' latest:

Whose "Special Interests"?
Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

We take it for granted that a vote means a secret ballot but it was not always that way. Moreover, it will not remain that way for workers who vote on whether or not they want a labor union, if legislation sponsored by Congressional Democrats and endorsed by Senator Barack Obama becomes law.

Before there were secret ballots, voters dared not express their true preferences if those who watched them vote could retaliate-- whether by firing them, beating them up or in other ways.

Anyone who is serious about people being free to express themselves with their votes wants a secret ballot.

The problem for labor unions is that workers in the private sector increasingly vote against being represented by unions. The proportion of workers in the private sector who are represented by unions has fallen below 10 percent.

Since unions are losing the game under the current rules, their obvious answer is to change the rules. Specifically, they want to do away with secret ballots when the government conducts elections to determine whether the workers in a particular company or industry want to be represented by a union.

With labor unions being major supporters of the Democratic Party-- spending hundreds of millions of dollars in this year's election campaign-- it is hardly surprising that Congressional Democrats have lined up solidly behind legislation to let union organizers simply collect signed cards from a majority of workers, in order to be certified as the officially recognized union for those workers.

Of course, the union organizers will then know who did and who did not vote for them. And they may have long memories or short fuses, or both. Moreover, the workers themselves know that, so they may find it prudent to sign up for a union, whether they want one or not.

This legislation passed the House of Representatives last year but did not make it through the Senate. "I will make it the law of the land when I'm President of the United States," Barack Obama has said to the AFL-CIO.

Senator Obama has also said many times that he is against "special interests." But, like most politicians who say that, he means that he is against other politicians' special interests. His own special interests are never called special interests.

Neither are the environmental extremists who support the Democrats called special interests. But the green zealots who have for decades blocked the country from using oil within our own borders-- more oil than in Saudi Arabia, by the way-- are also among the special interests with a big voice in the Democratic Party.

They are also a major factor in shutting down the democratic voting process-- in this case, in the House of Representatives, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a vote on drilling for oil in places where the green zealots don't want drilling.

The Congressional Democrats could of course vote to continue forbidding drilling in those places. But voters paying $4 a gallon for gas are not likely to agree with the green zealots-- and recent polls show that they do not.

Rather than lose votes in the November elections by voting with the green zealots, or lose the money that the green zealots contribute to the Democratic Party coffers, Nancy Pelosi simply shut down the House of Representatives, so that there could be no votes, and turned off the lights so that C-SPAN could not broadcast Republicans' speeches protesting what happened.

After all, what is democracy compared to support from the green zealots?

It is the same story when it comes to the teachers' unions, the biggest special interest of all in the Democratic Party. They not only contribute money, they can contribute people who walk the precincts on election nights, rounding up the faithful to go vote.

Even the Congressional Black Caucus dares not vote for vouchers or any other form of school choice that the teachers' unions oppose. Better to let a whole generation of black children be trapped in failing schools that employ union teachers.

But special interests? Not at all.

Just some more ANTI-Obama propaganda, I guess....

ETA: And Obama eats babies and is the Anti-Christ, too. And he sunk the Titantic.

[Ishpeck]

I hate labor unions all together.

[XDConvert9mm]

Originally Posted by Ishpeck

I hate labor unions all together.

Absolutely. They've become what they were created to fight against. A strong arming, abusive group with no loyalties to anything but the power of the Union itself.