Brian Worth of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace has a letter in The Oregonian newspaper, responding to a columnist who suggested “postcard check” is a legitimate alternative to card check and could possibly be included in a Congressional “compromise” on the spuriously named Employee Free Choice Act.

The column by Jeff Mapes reported that Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), elected in November with heavy union backing, had issued a news release decrying the criticism of the mail-in card, comparing the process to the Oregon’s all vote-by-mail elections.

Worth responds (scroll down):

Postcard check’ scheme
There is no comparison between Oregon early voting and congressional efforts to find alternatives to the wildly unpopular card check scheme (”Mail voting proposed in union ‘card check’ fight,” June 4).

The most important distinction is that there’s no ballot involved in the mail-in
card proposal. It merely substitutes the discredited card check ruse with a “postcard check” — a new and equally flawed variation. The postcard check proposal increases the power of the professional union organizer, eviscerates secret ballot elections and further weakens workers’ privacy rights.

Like regular card check, mail-in cards do not provide the guaranteed security and privacy of a voting booth, thus inviting fraud, intimidation and coercion with more visits to workers’ homes by union organizers.

This latest attempt to fix what is wrong with the Employee Free Choice Act opens the door to abuse through ACORN-style campaigning that is prone to fraud and increases the possibility of worker intimidation and coercion. As National Labor Relations Board career staff noted, mail-in cards increase the “potential for interference by any party.”

You can’t fix card check by simply adding postage and this alternative further expands the attack on worker privacy from the workplace to the home.

The National Association of Manufacturers is a member of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and glad of it.

Brian Worth of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace responds to a Washington Post editorial on the Employee Free Choice Act in an op-ed today, “Labor’s Card-Check Ruse“:

Compromise for the sake of compromise often leads to bad public policy, and efforts to reach a compromise on the union “card check” bill fall into this category. The issue here is that unions are declining because they don’t serve the needs of today’s workers, but instead of admitting that, labor is trying to save itself by unfairly changing the rules. While the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace has agreed with The Post’s assessment of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) as flawed legislation, we disagree with the premise in the May 11 editorial “The Imperfect Union Bill” that we must accept ill-conceived proposals to appease the notion that a compromise is needed on EFCA.

The National Association of Manufacturers is member of the Coalition, and the group’s website is here.

In the continuing staffing up of Cabinet agencies, the White House last week announced the appointment of Mary Beth Maxwell to be a senior advisor to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, with liaison responsibilities to Vice President Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force.

AP summarizes: “President Barack Obama has appointed a key union activist as senior adviser to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, another sign of the influence that organized labor wields in the Obama administration.”

Maxwell has been the executive director of American Rights at Work, a union front group* that has financed much of the advertising in support of the Employee Free Choice Act — or more accurately, attacking business as greedy exploiters of the working man and women. The political scuttlebutt before Solis’ nomination as Labor Secretary was that Maxwell might fill the post. (See this Wall Street Journal blog post.) Solis served on American Rights at Work’s board of directors.

We’re in low, low dudgeon about appointments like Maxwell’s. Of course a Democratic White House is going to put labor allies in positions of power at the Department of Labor. And being named as a liaison to a PR effort looks like the very definition of a sinecure as opposed to being put in a substantive position of power.

* We refer to American Rights at Work as a “union front group” just as a dig. Its hack writers are always referring to the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace as a front group for corporations, etc., when the group — in which the NAM is an active member — is clear about its membership. CDW opposes the Employee Free Choice Act.

If anything, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace should be called a “corporate upfront group.”

* American Rights at Work describes itself as a non-profit. Yes, but the group is also registered as a lobbying organization. See its latest disclosure. So we’ll now call them a “union front group and lobbying outfit.”

So much news and commentary on the deceitful Employee Free Choice Act…

Stuart Taylor of the National Journal is always good, and he capably analyzes labor’s tendentious arguments for the legislation in “How To Deny Employees Free Choice.” A good summary for the uninitiated, and Taylor makes a point about the dynamics of recognition campaigns that unions want the public to ignore:

The complaints about employer propaganda during election campaigns are simply not persuasive. Anti-union propaganda is no less legitimate than pro-union propaganda. One person’s propaganda is another’s free speech. And the labor laws already address the risk of propaganda being tinged with intimidation by placing strict — perhaps unduly strict — limits on employer communications with employees.

Union organizers can approach employees in their homes, in bars, or anywhere else, without the employer’s knowledge, with visions of better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Employers, on the other hand, can approach employees only in the workplace, and cannot predict (”threaten”) that they will close up shop if the union wins — no matter how accurate the prediction might be.

Elsewhere, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace — to which the NAM belongs — has highlighted the strange conception James Hoffa of the Teamsters has of democracy. Here’s a Coalition ad:

Blogging at National Review Online’s The Corner, Cesar Conda of Navigators Global, which does CDW communications strategy, observes:

Almost 20 years ago to the day, the Teamsters signed a landmark consent decree with the United States Justice Department to avoid prosecution on Mob-related corruption. The agreement required the Teamsters to institute secret-ballot voting for its president and other senior officers to rid the union of Mob influence. Given the Teamsters’ history with corruption, it is remarkable that James P. Hoffa, the union’s current president who himself has been elected three times by secret ballot, would dismiss the importance of secret-ballot voting to free and fair elections. But last week in a press statement applauding the introduction of the Employee Free Choice Act, he did just that when he asked “since when has the secret ballot been a basic tenet of democracy?”

I encourage those with an interest in the card-check debate to review the media’s coverage of the March 1989 settlement between the Teamsters and the Justice Department, and the subsequent coverage of the Teamsters’ first secret ballot presidential election in 1991. The secret-ballot reform was widely hailed by labor experts and editorial pages as a major breakthrough in the labor movement that would make the nation’s largest union more democratic and accountable to its rank and file members. At that time, Dennis Rivera, the head of the New York health-care workers union and the current chairman of the SEIU’s health-care task force, even suggested that federal labor law be changed to require secret-ballot elections of every labor leader in the country. 

The Wall Street Journal notes the bully-boy tactics another union, the SEIU, is employing against members of Congress who refuse to toe labor’s line. From “Unionize or Die“:

The video’s target is Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren, a Democrat who recently declared that he’ll vote against labor’s top priority. The video concludes by calling for Mr. Boren by name to “stop risking workers’ lives” and support the bill. The political ad also serves as a warning to other Democrats in Congress — including Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; Ben Nelson of Nebraska; Michael Bennet of Colorado; and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — who haven’t declared how they’ll vote. The message is that if they don’t sign on the SEIU line, they’ll get roughed up, and perhaps face a primary challenge next election.

Propaganda, disparaging of secret-ballot elections, vicious politicking: It’s hard to take seriously labor’s claims to be representing the interests of the employees, any employees.

Vice President Joe Biden speaks to the AFL-CIO Executive Council in Miami today, following up on Tuesday’s playing of President Obama’s two-week old recorded video message. President Obama just made a passing reference to the Employee Free Choice Act. We’ll see if the Vice President gives it more attention.

In saluting organized labor’s No. 1 legislative priority, the President and Vice President might also want to remember that the public – including Obama supporters – overwhelmingly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act. Recent polling performed by McLaughlin and Associates showed that 73% of Obama voters are opposed to EFCA and 86% of Obama voters believe that a worker’s vote should be kept private in a union organizing election.  81% of these same Obama supporters believe that Congress should focus on other issues like jobs and health care before dealing with EFCA.

In fact, an Obama supporter just wrote a strongly worded letter to the editor in a Pennsylvania newspaper highlighting his concerns by asserting:

If workers decide to unionize, that is their right. The laws can be modified to make it easier to unionize. But, the secret ballot should never be sacrificed! If we are to remain the greatest and the most productive country in the world, the rights of American workers must continue to include the secret ballot when deciding whether to unionize.

Brian Worth, chairman of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (the NAM is a member), responds to the op-ed by UAW’s Ron Gettelfinger we wrote about below.

From today’s Detroit News, “Publicizing labor votes violates workers’ privacy”

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger crossed the line when he injected race into the debate over whether American workers should have the right to vote in private during union organizing elections (”Worker rights bill deserves debate, vote,” Feb. 6). By comparing opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act to the Southern senators who blocked civil rights legislation in the 1960s, Gettelfinger undermines his own credibility and does a disservice to the labor movement.

Let’s be clear about what the Employee Free Choice Act does. The bill would replace secret ballot elections with a card check scheme where the votes of workers would be made public to their employers, co-workers and union organizers.

Without the protection of the secret ballot, there would be no guarantee that workers could express their true wishes on the personal decision of whether to have a union in their workplace. Labor leaders want Congress to pass card check because the bill will make it easier for labor organizers to recruit workers into joining unions.

But the American people, including rank-and-file union members, understand the importance of the secret ballot and are opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act by overwhelming margins.

In a recent poll conducted for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, 73 percent of union workers opposed the proposal. This helps explain why President Barack Obama has backed away from card check in recent weeks and why Gettelfinger is desperately playing the race card to defend it.

That’s right. The political support for the Employee Free Choice Act is weaker than advocates hoped for. (See this Hill article, “Contentious labor bill struggles behind the scenes“)

Besides being an odious line of argument, Gettelfinger’s rhetoric is also foolish in the big political picture. The UAW is a supplicant right now, asking members of Congress for help in supporting the domestic auto manufacturers. It’s not smart politics to be arguing, “Hey, you Senators! You unreconstructed Dixiecrat racists — Give us money!”

Or more like re-establishmentarianism…

In a basic, thorough examination of organized labor’s push for the Employee Free Choice Act and business’ resistance, Bloomberg ends its story with an interesting claim from Richard Trumka, treasurer of the AFL-CIO. From “Labor Seeks Obama Help in Battle With Business Over Organizing“:

“Unlike in the past, instead of saying `OK, we’ve elected you, now do what’s right by us,’ we are going to keep our machinery in place,” Trumka said. “We are going to make sure that our interests are considered at the front of the parade.”

Keep our machinery in place? Certainly hope that doesn’t mean in place, institutionally, at the Department of Labor.

Meanwhile, in the Las Vegas Review Journal, local business talks. From “Election result rekindles card-check debate“:

When members of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s government affairs committee met Thursday morning, the Obama-supported Employee Free Choice Act proved a hot topic.

The proposed federal law would replace secret-ballot unionizing elections with face-to-face card-check procedures, and both unions and businesses agree it would make organizing workers easier than it is today.

“We’re really worried about the way the law is written,” said Steve Hill, a member of the committee who’s also incoming chamber chairman and president and chief executive officer of concrete company Silver State Materials. “It has not reached the level of attention it needs. It’s been discussed and killed (in Congress), and people don’t know it’s still out there. We need to do a better job getting word out that it’s a possibility, and tell businesses what it means to them.”

After all the work the NAM and our members have put into explaining the fundamental anti-democratic nature of the Employee Free Choice Act, it’s a little discouraging to read our friends in business say, “It has not reached the level of attention it needs.” Steve, we’re working, honestly!

But he’s probably right. People only have so much time to follow issues — even important ones like how labor markets are structured — and “card check” is not a self-explanatory term.

Still, seems like we’re making progress. The union, American Rights at Work, released carefully scrubbed results and predictable commentary on a post-election survey of U.S. Senate elections in which the Employee Free Choice Act was an issue. Check out this comment from the executive summary from Peter D. Hart Research Associates:

Voters in Senate battleground states who voted for the anti-Employee Free Choice Act candidate overwhelmingly describe their vote as being FOR (67%) that candidate rather than AGAINST (28%) the pro-Employee Free Choice Act candidate who was the target of negative advertising. If the attacks on supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act had made a significant impact, we would expect the proportion of voters saying they cast their ballot against those supporters to be higher.

Twenty-eight percent of those who voted against the candidate who supported the Employee Free Choice Act did so BECAUSE of the candidate’s position? That’s huge, a reflection of an informed electorate, educated through the advertising of groups like the NAM-supported Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.

If in promoting a survey designed to show that voters supported pro-union candidates American Rights at Work has to admit that 28 percent of the votes against their candidate were influenced by the Employee Free Choice Act, well…think of the results they didn’t release.

• Jay Ambrose at The Examiner examines how politicians could support something as “despicably foul” as card check legislation that would strip away secret ballot elections for union elections and result in workers being exposed to intimidation. Ambrose asserts that there is no difference in principle between taking away secret ballots for union elections or Congressional elections.

• The final Presidential candidate debate takes place tonight at Hofstra, where the focus is expected to be on the economy. Although card check  as a topic has escaped  the recent debates, it may come up tonight, especially in light of the McCain campaign’s recent efforts to highlight Sen. Obama’s  backing. The NAM’s CEO Gov. John Engler made it clear that card check is a top concern for manufacturers in the Q&A section of his Detroit Economic Club Monday. Talk about it, candidates!

• The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which the NAM is a leader of, has announced the launch of a six state direct mail blitz. This effort seeks to compare the positions of Senate candidates in Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Oregon to highlight where the candidates really stand on protecting worker privacy.

There is a lot of good news and commentary out there on the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), organized labor’s attempt to eliminate secret ballot elections in the workplace.

• New information from the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry shows that EFCA is a losing issue in Louisiana. The poll, performed by Southern Media & Opinion Research, points out that the majority of likely voters in Louisiana, like other national trends, oppose the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. The results of the poll show voters in the Pelican State strongly reject the EFCA, with 74% of likely voters preferring to maintain the current process for forming a union that uses private ballots, and 65% of likely voters oppose the EFCA which would replace secret ballots with a “card check” system that exposes workers to coercion when making the important decision of whether to form a union. The findings of this poll are consistent with the findings of a similar poll performed by the NAM through the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace by McLaughlin & Associates earlier this year.
• John Motley provides a comprehensive overview of the issues surrounding the EFCA in a piece in the National Review. Motley provides perspective on the unusual nature of the card check issue with one of the most liberal Democratic Presidential candidates George McGovern urging his fellow Democrats to oppose the EFCA. This OpEd further explains some the politics behind the legislation. However, the need to defend workers’ right to a private ballot is a non-partisan issue. All political parties should work to defend this important right.
• The Oregonian’s lone market-minded opinion writer weighs in on the issue with a tough column, that examines what’s at stake in this year’s election by examining card check legislation. The Oregonian’s David Reinhard, points out the bill’s seemingly Orwellian double-speak title. Reinhard sums up the lasting consequences of this proposal:

“And, whether you favor card check or the private ballot, the two presidential candidates’ differences on this one issue could have a profound and tangible impact on American business, labor and politics for years to come.”

The DFL Party in Minnesota, feigning outrage that someone would express disagreement with their candidates’ support of the Employee Free Choice Act, tried to punish and prevent the speech rather than argue against it. Indicative of the mindset that would destroy the secret ballot, don’t you think?

The DFL filed a formal complaint with the Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings against the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, among others, for running TV ads about card check legislation and the positions of Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) and his opponent, Democrat Al Franken. Under state law, it is a gross misdemeanor to run an a false add with reckless disregard of its falsehood. (211B.06 FALSE POLITICAL AND CAMPAIGN MATERIAL; PENALTY; EXCEPTIONS)

The ad’s supposed offense was to claim that by supporting the card check bill, “Franken says eliminate the secret ballot for workers.” Also objected to was the announcer’s statement: “Call Al Franken. Tell him he’s wrong to end worker privacy.”

After an initial go-around and appeal, Administrative Law Judge Barbara L. Neilson has now ruled against the DFL. In her order, she writes: 

The statement that Mr. Franken wants to eliminate the secret ballot is not factually false, since the EFCA will eliminate the secret ballot vote for union organizing elections where a majority of employees sign union authorization cards.

Because Mr. Franken supports the EFCA, the statement, “Franken says eliminate the secret ballot for workers,” is not false. It may be misleading and it certainly is incomplete, but it is not false within the meaning of § 211B.06. Similarly, the second statement is not factually false. Because the EFCA will eliminate private ballot elections in certain circumstances, it is not untruthful to characterize the bill’s effect as “end[ing] worker privacy.” Section 211B.06 does not regulate unfavorable deductions, inferences, unfair characterizations or misleading remarks.35 As with the first statement, this statement is not “false” under the statute.

Beyond that, we’ll assert that the statements were true. There would be little point to the Employee Free Choice Act if it were to NOT eliminate the secret ballot. Only through the public collection of signatures on union representation cards, with the associated peer pressure and intimidation, can organized labor achieve its goal — forcing employees into a union against their will.

We wrote “feigning outrage” above when describing the DFL’s legal attack against free speech, in so far as the party and its union allies recognized the standard to strike down the ad is extremely high. (It’s the “reckless disregard” standard that applies in libel suits by public officials, going back to Times v. Sullivan.) So why did they do it?

They were cynically engaging in intimidation. Pressure. Any tool in their toolbox to silence opposition.

Intimidation. Pressure. And the same tactics will be used against individual employees when union organizers ask them to join by signing a card.

 Coalition news release.