If you’re out and about over the Independence Day holiday — attending a Fourth of July parade, perhaps — and you spot a member of Congress, be sure to let him or her know why the Employee Free Choice Act will harm employers, employees and the right NOT to be unionized.

Here’s an NAM-produced video about EFCA, including the voices of workers who think EFCA is a bad, bad idea.

Thanks to the NAM’s Matt Preiss and James Skelly for producing the video.

Closer to 60 votes for the Employee Free Choice Act?  Well, yes, by definition, but …

Seth Borden at EFCA Report reaches a conclusion that we tend to share:

Expect a renewed wave of enthusiasm by the bill’s supporters in the days to come.  Still, once Franken is seated as the second Senator from Minnesota, EFCA in its current form faces an uphill battle.   Many of the 60 votes possibly controlled by the Democrats have openly questioned the bill’s current provisions – Sens. Lincoln, Feinstein, and Bennet to name but a few.  Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), whose recent famous party switch put the Democrats this close to the prospect of cloture on any given measure, has consistently criticized EFCA as currently drafted. 

With lots of links, including more speculation about Specter’s position and Sen. Tom Harkin’s “compromise.”

President Obama has announced his intention to nominate George Cohen for a role that not too many folks outside of Washington have ever heard of: the Director of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. So what’s the big deal? Why is this post important?

Well, if the misleadingly named Employee Free Choice Act becomes the law of the land, the Mr. Cohen will be the one that oversees the agency charged with forcing government contracts on newly unionized private employers.

You may think that’s outrageous, but I refer you to read the details of the legislation:

S.560
Section 3
`(2) If after the expiration of the 90-day period beginning on the date on which bargaining is commenced, or such additional period as the parties may agree upon, the parties have failed to reach an agreement, either party may notify the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service of the existence of a dispute and request mediation. Whenever such a request is received, it shall be the duty of the Service promptly to put itself in communication with the parties and to use its best efforts, by mediation and conciliation, to bring them to agreement.

`(3) If after the expiration of the 30-day period beginning on the date on which the request for mediation is made under paragraph (2), or such additional period as the parties may agree upon, the Service is not able to bring the parties to agreement by conciliation, the Service shall refer the dispute to an arbitration board established in accordance with such regulations as may be prescribed by the Service. The arbitration panel shall render a decision settling the dispute and such decision shall be binding upon the parties for a period of 2 years, unless amended during such period by written consent of the parties.’.

Yikes. George Cohen, a person you may have never heard of before today may become the person that oversees the system that determines how you can you manage your own workforce.

The Washington Post ran a piece today that focused on an interview with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. Of course, the most controversial labor issue was brought up: the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The Secretary asserts that in “many cases, in many cases, workers have been disadvantaged.” She claims, “They’ve been intimidated, they’ve been harassed, and we have case after case after case that we can look at.”

She then makes an argument popular with organized labor, describing “barriers” that have been put in place “over the past few years”. Well, what precisely? Why wasn’t the Secretary pressed for specifics? One can only assume that she is referring to decisions of the National Labor Relations Board. The President has already nominated two individuals to the board who will significantly change the dynamics of the board for years to come.

If there are legitimate violations of the National Labor Relations Act, then let’s have the NLRB rule on them. If there are other barriers, let’s have the NLRB review them. Otherwise, let’s talk facts: Workers who wish to become union members are able to do so. Last year alone unions saw membership increase by 400,000, unions won 67% of the secret ballot elections and these elections took place 95% of the time within 56 days.

Not seeing any coverage of Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks to the Communications Workers of America on Wednesday, we transcribed his remarks related to the Employee Free Choice Act.

The quotable parts:

You know, the National Labor Relations Act says we should “encourage” – paraphrase – “encourage” unions, not mandate them, encourage them. Why? It’s good for the economy. It’s gotten lopsided, folks.

The guys who were supposed to be wearing striped shirts have been wearing black shirts the last eight years. We don’t have referees out there doing it the right way. We’re switching out the shirts, because we’re switching out the people wearing the shirts.

Black shirts? As in Italian fascists? We assume that’s just a slip, a hasty conflation of black hats and striped shirts, but man…

And:

So if we were just able to get a fora [sic] in which we could debate this honestly and straight-forwardly, without all the baggage, without all the hyperbole, this is something I believe right-thinking, decent Americans, Democrat and Republican, if they hear it out, would be supportive of.

No hyperbole, but the Vice President believes “right-thinking, decent Americans” would support the Employee Free Choice Act. Elsewhere, he suggests that “the good guys in the business community” understand the need for card check, and it’s the “business elites” who oppose it. Isn’t there a possibility employers might oppose the EFCA as a matter of principle? Apparently not.

The Vice President’s premise is that the system is stacked against unions that are trying to organize workplaces. But unions won more than two-thirds of the representation elections in the first half of 2008. How is that stacked against them?

Here are the transcribed remarks from the Vice President’s appearance yesterday at the joint convention/legislative-political conference of the CWA.

Yesterday at the Communications Workers of America’s joint convention/legislative-political conference Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) spoke in strong support of the jobs-killing Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA.)

Sen. Harkin tried to persuade the crowd that EFCA is still “alive and kicking” despite his admissions that unless the bill is significantly changed it doesn’t have the necessary votes to get passed in the Senate.

But how significantly will it be changed?

The Senator said that any new version of the EFCA would have to be based on a set of parameters:
• Allowing for majority sign-up (that’s union speak for card check)
• Require unionized workers to receive a first contract by a date certain
• And added penalties against employers for labor law violations

Well folks, that’s still EFCA!

The Senator said that if he is unsuccessful with a “compromise” version of the bill, he will still ask to have the current EFCA legislation brought to Senator floor for a cloture vote. Why?

…so workers will know who your friends are.

Well now it’s clear that the real intent of the legislation isn’t labor law reform, it’s politics.

The AFL-CIO union’s secretary-treasurer, Richard Trumka recently claimed:

…organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and giant corporations are bombarding the airwaves and filling major newspapers with pricey advertisements designed to turn public opinion against the proposed legislation.

[Our emphasis.]

Trumka’s statement implies that public opinion already supports EFCA. This is clearly not the case. A poll of general election voters conducted by McLaughlin & Associates highlights that the reality is that the majority of voters oppose EFCA.

Unfortunately organized labor and their front groups are engaged in an effort to redirect the focus away from the details of the bill. But when you’re writing laws, it’s the details that matter.

The AFL-CIO blog is promoting a piece by the union’s secretary-treasurer, Richard Trumka, published in International Union Rights, the journal of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR). It’s the usual foam-flecked attack against business and therefore dull, but Trumka does use a term we’ve been meaning to mention: front group.

Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have launched a $200 million campaign to defeat it. Working through front groups with innocuous-sounding names like the Center for Union Facts, organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and giant corporations are bombarding the airwaves and filling major newspapers with pricey advertisements designed to turn public opinion against the proposed legislation. More crucially, their lobbyists are deluging lawmakers in Congress with repeated visits and contacts to pressure them into voting against the bill when it comes up this year.

Labor calling business coalitions “front groups” is meant to imply shadowy, dishonest organizations created to hide one’s alliances. It cannot conceivably be applied to the Coalition for Democratic Workplace, the group the National Association of Manufacturers is active in. In our Shopfloor.org posts on the CDW’s activities, we almost always include a line associating the NAM with its efforts, such as, “The National Association of Manufacturers is a member of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and glad of it.” And here’s the CDW’s membership list.

If Trumka wants his attacks against “front groups” to have some modicum of intellectual honesty, he might want to level them via some other group than the International Centre for Trade Union Rights.

It always seemed strange that organized labor has solicited the support of the environmental left in pushing for passage of the undemocratic Employee Free Choice Act. (See earlier posts.) Why make common cause with groups that oppose the kind of human activities that keeps union members employed — construction, transportation, mining and manufacturing? Especially when history tells you the environmental groups will agree on a consensus, a compromise, or a modus vivendi on an issue and then a month later file a lawsuit in federal court. (Think Northwest timber harvests.

Perhaps the tactics themselves unite these groups. Developments in California suggest as much, as recounted in Walter Olson’s post at Point of Law, “California unions’ environmental extortion“:

Today’s Times:

As California moves to license dozens of huge solar power plants to meet the state’s renewable energy goals, some developers contend they are being pressured to sign agreements pledging to use union labor. If they refuse, they say, they can count on the union group to demand costly environmental studies and deliver hostile testimony at public hearings.

If they commit at the outset to use union labor, they say, the environmental objections never materialize.

“This does stress the limits of credibility to some extent,” the California energy commissioner, Jeffrey Byron, said at one contentious hearing, “when an attorney representing a labor union is so focused on the potential impact of a solar power plant on birds.”

It seems Bob Balgenorth, chairman of the labor group accused of exploiting the environmental laws this way, “has cultivated strong ties with conservation groups”. I wonder whether there’s a tie-in with the Sierra Club’s and NRDC’s endorsement of EFCA?

So jobs or the environmenta are not at issue, just the raw use of power to accrue more power.

Eventually, of course, one side will betray the other. It’s in their nature.

The National Right to Work Foundation has put up a new video highlighting the dangers of card check schemes. These are real employees explaining how aggressive union organizing can be. If the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law these scenarios may unfortunately become all too common.