Repost- The so-called Employee Free Choice Act

This is a re-post of my 9/2/2008 post.

I am adding a link to Human Events: 10/6 H/E Article. I am glad to see that someone else finally noticed this 'card-check' issue.


I am not going to blog on the whole VP brouhaha - It bores me. Though, I am fascinated to see Obama saying 'I have more experience than Sarah Palin' - If he were only running for VPOTUS, this might make some sense....

Anyway - on the the mis-named 'Employee Free Choice Act', or EFCA. This should win the award for the 'Most Deceptively Named Legislation' in history.

The thrust of the act: It would remove the requirement for a secret ballot in elections that decide whether workers at a company want to form a union.

Instead, it would allow something called 'card-check'. This means that a Union representative (let's call him Vito - or Crusher, or Knuckles) would come to the employee of a company that the union was seeking to organize. Vito would hand the employee a 'card' and ask (nicely, I am sure) 'Duze you wants to sign this here card to get da union?'.

Now, you as the employee, can either sign - or, face the prospect of a late night visit from Vito and the other Crusher brothers to 'discuss' your objection to the Union. This will not be hard to imagine - since the Union will have the names of all 'prospective members' at their disposal.

This is compared to the current, secret, ballot where no one knows who voted for or against the union. What is interesting is that the Union's originally pushed for the secret ballot to battle company's intimidation of its workers. And it worked exactly that way - it protected workers from company retaliation. But now, it is protecting workers from Union intimidation - so enter the 'card check' of the EFCA.

It was very clever to name this bill the EFCA. The only free choice you have is to sign the card in the presence of Union thugs to avoid getting your ass kicked later - or phone calls at night - or vandalism of your car....you get the picture.

For two opposing websites:
For the EFCA (union backed): http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/
Against: Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/research/Labor/bg2027.cfm

Now, Barack Hussein Obama (aka BHO) is for the EFCA - no surprise - because it is a Socialist's dream come true.

As an interesting aside - did you know that Sarah Palin's husband is a member of the United Steel Workers?