Pro-union bill faces pressure for changes WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders hinted Tuesday that compromise may be needed to get wavering lawmakers on board for a bill to make union organizing easier. The Democrats insisted they are not losing support, but acknowledged that some changes might be needed. The comments came as the Employee Free Choice Act was formally introduced in the House and Senate, intensifying the already heated debate between business groups that oppose the measure and labor groups that consider it their top priority. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a lead sponsor of the bill, said his colleagues are talking about “certain modifications,” but no agreement has been reached. The bill would dramatically change labor laws by allowing workers to form unions by simply signing a card or petition, removing an employer’s right to demand a secret ballot vote. It also would impose stronger penalties on employers who violate labor laws and allow for arbitration to settle contract disputes. Unions say the bill would discourage employers from firing or harassing workers who seek to organize and claim increased union membership would boost wages and help the economy. At a hearing before the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee, Republicans called it a job-killing measure that would leave workers open to union intimidation. An identical version of the bill cleared the House easily two years ago, but could not muster 60 votes to get past a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
What Strock fails to mention in his description of EFCA is the mandatory-arbitration provision. The government has no role in "good faith" bargaining between employees and employers required under curent law, and there are no time limits for collective bargaining. EFCA includes a mandatory-arbitration provision. Sound familiar? (look no further than PUBLIC employee unions) Under EFCA, the employer would be required to meet with the new union within ten days of the union's request for bargaining. If an agreement is not reached within 90 days, either party can request mediation by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. If an agreement is not reached within 30 days thereafter, an arbitrator (or arbitration panel) would dictate the contract. The current issue of National Review discusses this subject at length. In it, a former National Labor Board chairman is quoted from testimony to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee: "No outside agency, whether arbitration, courts, or government entity, has the skill, knowledge, or expertise to create a collective-bargaining agreement. If it is not a creature of the parties' creation, it likely will fail of its purpose. The negotiation of a collective-bargaining is the search for mutually resolving each side's interests. It must be done with trade-offs and separate prioritizing. Only the parties can do that. There are no standards for arbitrators to apply. There is no skill set for arbitrators to use. Solomon is simply unavailable." Further, it has been suggested that the mandatory-arbitration provision amounts to an unlawful delegation of legislative authority under Article 1 of the Fifth Amendment, which gives all federal legislative authority to Congress - not to chosen arbitrators.
There is no skill set for arbitrators to use. Solomon is simply unavailable." Further, it has been suggested that the mandatory-arbitration provision amounts to an unlawful delegation of legislative authority under Article 1 of the Fifth Amendment, which gives all federal legislative authority to Congress - not to chosen arbitrators.
interesting,,,,,very very very interesting......$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
who will be in charge of our 'RealID' or bios-timeclock punching??????????????????????????
who will be our shepherd???????? no where to hide...no taxes waiting, no illegal immigration, no healthcare, no food, no water etc etc...........................talk about reality TV...........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
The Heritage Foundation explains how the system presently works and how "Card Check" will tip the balance.
"For more than 60 years, American workers have decided whether to form a union with a private vote... neither management nor union organizers know how each individual worker voted. The secret ballot lets workers vote their conscience without risking job loss or physical assault for making the 'wrong' choice... . The EFCA would make it easier for union officials to pressure workers. Under the card-check process, union organizers would publicly solicit signatures on union authorization cards... Without secret ballots, union organizers know exactly who has signed union cards and who has not. In the past, union organizers have repeatedly approached and pressured-and, in some cases, threatened-reluctant workers. They have also used pro-union co-workers to solicit signatures, putting peer pressure on 'holdouts' to change their minds."
So what's the big deal?
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich explains just why such a change is a radical threat to your bottom line:
"Under Card Check, union organizers and their enforcers will be able to go into any small business, hospital or construction site and coerce workers into signing cards. If they get 50 percent plus one, the deal's done, and the workers are forced into a union. And if management and the new union fail to reach a negotiated contract, the federal government will just impose one. Coerced unionization allows for what is effectively a new, unaccountable form of forced taxation. Workers will have a portion of their paycheck going to the union to be spent as the bosses see fit, including political donations to parties and candidates that the workers may not even support." [Emphasis Mine]
Let's put that in more personal terms.
Let's say that union organizers come into YOUR workplace and through coercion or peer-pressure - or even physical intimidation - "convince" a simple majority of your co-workers to form a union.
At that point you only have two choices. You either join the union or face job termination. You can't opt-out!
And once you "join" the union, you are FORCED to pay union dues. Again, you cannot opt-out. You have no choice in the matter, and the union dues will come directly out of each and every paycheck you receive!
Not only will you have no choice but to have those union dues taken out of your paycheck every week, you will have little or no say in how those dues are spent!
How your hard-earned money gets spent will be up to the whims of union bosses. And make no mistake, your hard-earned money - this new-found windfall that the union will ration from your paychecks - will go, in large part, to fund advocacy for the very left-wing causes that you find repugnant.
But that's not all. When the union tells you to strike... you strike... no unemployment benefits... just a meager strike fund that does not even come close to paying the bills...
... during such a strike, you can't go to work until a union boss tells you it is okay - NO IFS, ANDS OR BUTS!
Perhaps that's why, according to polls cited by Gingrich, "77 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of independents" oppose doing away with the secret balloting provisions that "Card Check" would ERADICATE!
But it gets worse. If the union bosses and the company management can't reach an agreement about your job, then bureaucrats in the Obama Administration would then FORCE an agreement on both parties.
In other words, government bureaucrats would be empowered to determine all aspects of your job - even down to the compensation you make, regardless of any agreement you and your employer come to.
Heritage again:
"Section 3 of EFCA gives government officials the power to impose contracts on workers and firms. Government bureaucrats would set compensation and make most major business decisions at newly unionized companies. The bureaucrats writing these proposals would have no expertise in the company's operations or business model and would be unaccountable if their decisions drove the company into bankruptcy. Workers would lose all say over working conditions. EFCA would effectively create government-run workplaces."
To put it another way - and let's speak plainly here - if your boss doesn't knuckle-under to union demands, then some Obama appointee will simply step in and FORCE the union demands onto your employer!
Unions deserve Free Choice Act more than Wall Street deserves bailout BY TIM RUTTEN Los Angeles Times
President Barack Obama and his administration have made a complete shambles of the AIG bailout, and the failure won’t be papered over by the chief executive’s populist campaign rhetoric. To call it an “outrage” doesn’t begin to describe the disgraced insurance giant’s payment of $165 million in bonuses to securities traders in the very division whose dealings in so-called credit default swaps was at the root of Wall Street’s current meltdown. All this for the guys who pushed over the first boulder in the current financial avalanche. And for what? So that American International Group Inc. can “unwind” its disastrous investments. It’s a bit like a bank robber insisting he’s entitled to a finder’s fee for telling you where he buried the loot. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported last week that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is using millions in federal bailout money to make loans to its employees whose stakes in the company’s internal investment partnerships have been undermined by the collapse of the real estate and equities markets. DOUBLE STANDARD In its own way, what’s happening at Goldman is every bit as appalling as the AIG debacle. Has anyone offered you government funds to shore up the losses in your 401(k) or retirement portfolio? It’s a ludicrous double standard that reflects the ethical sinkhole Wall Street has made of its relationship with the rest of American society. AIG has insisted that the company is “contractually obligated” to follow through with the bonuses. The last time the right of contract was draped in as much sanctimony was when lawyers representing the robber barons of our first Gilded Age argued that the inviolability of contracts precluded the adoption of child labor laws. Think back for a second to the beginnings of the financial crisis last year. When the auto companies went to the Bush administration asking for help, the first conditions imposed on them were executive pay cuts and renegotiation of their union contracts to bring down labor costs. The United Auto Workers went along because it wanted to save the companies and the jobs of the workers they employ. What we’re essentially being asked to believe is that employment contracts involving hardworking men and women on Detroit’s assembly lines are somehow less legally binding — less “sacred” in the current rhetorical argot — than those protecting a bunch of cowboy securities traders living in Connecticut. When Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, piously tells us that the administration’s hands are tied because we all must abide “by the rule of law,” perhaps it’s time to ask: What rule and for whom? For years, the smart guys on Wall Street have convinced a growing number of Americans that organized labor is an impediment to economic progress, an unacceptable “cost” in a globalized system of production, a quaint social fossil from the era of mills and smokestacks. If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from the current crisis, however, it’s that when the chips are down, organized labor is a far more responsible social actor than the snatch-andrun characters who fancy themselves financiers. WIDE IMPLICATIONS The implications of this are wider than most of us imagine, and they deserve to be considered. Today, slightly less than 8 percent of all American workers belong to a union. Half a century ago, when more than one in three American workers were unionized, the middle class was growing — not simply because organized labor won better wages and benefits for its members but because the presence of a vigorous labor movement pulled everybody else’s compensation up as well. As union membership dropped, middle-class incomes — and average families’ share of the nation’s wealth — stagnated and then fell. Families compensated for their reduced opportunity at first by sending both parents into the workplace, then by working more hours and, more recently, by going deeper and deeper into debt. At the same time, the incomes and share of the national wealth held by people like the AIG securities traders grew exponentially. The Employee Free Choice Act, currently pending in both houses of Congress, would give unions the tools they need to reorganize a reasonable share of the American workplace. Whatever the howls of opposition from Wall Street’s mandarins and their lackeys, the House and Senate ought to pass the bill and Obama ought to sign it as quickly as possible. We may ..............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar02902
In response to David Rakvica’s March 11 letter, “Keep balloting over unionizing secret as any other election”: Pertaining to the Employee Free Choice Act, Mr. Rakvica states, “There is no private-ballot election. There is no free choice, but a forced choice to benefi t special-interest groups.” Who are these special-interest groups? Business owners, chambers of commerce, corporations, associated builders and contractor members, lawyers? Or, on the other hand, is he referring to unions? Why is corporate America so afraid of letting workers have a voice in the workplace? They are spending millions to prevent the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Corporate America has done a good job making its arguments, even if they are not accurate. What Mr. Rakvica of the Associated Builders and Contractors, and others, are not saying is that the Employee Free Choice Act actually gives workers two different ways to choose whether to form a union — through an election process or through majority sign-up. The choice is up to the workers, and therein lies the fear of corporate America. Contrary to the rhetoric from “the other side,” the Employee Free Choice Act does not do away with the secret ballot election process. Mr. Rakvica also speaks of intimidation and coercion with respect to the signing of cards for unionizing. What about the fear, intimidation and coercion from corporate America that is held over the heads of working people on a daily basis? Is this democracy? Unions brought the middle class into existence. When people can collectively organize and bargain for wages and benefits, working families and the economy benefit. Period. In opposition to Mr. Rakvica and others, I ask all working people to tell Congress to fully support and vote for the Employee Free Choice Act.
DONALD W. RAHM Schenectady The writer is business manager for the Interna tional Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local Union 236.
Workers can join a union anytime they want to just as long as the vote taken to join said union is by secret ballot and not have a union representative smear your name and threaten you as can happen with the Free Choice Act.
Both parties (unions/legislators) fighting over the power to gather info/$$ on workers.....there will be no money, just sweat/blood and the value of human's as machine/goods.......the nation with the happiest/most productive workers gets the $$ and that will be our value.....as for gold there is no standard......
will the unions provide the happy and productive workers??? did they do us good in Detroit??? collusion is dangerous and shortsighted.......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Whew! Dems shy from axing elections Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Latest word on the bill to abolish elections for the unionizing of workers in private industry is that it’s dead. A few key senators have abandoned it, and there are now not enough Democratic votes to fend off an anticipated Republican filibuster. So reported The New York Times last week, and so has everyone else confirmed. Therefore “card-check,” as it was euphemistically called, is kaput. Or “majority sign-up,” which was another euphemism pushed by labor unions to make the thing more palatable. Anything but “election abolition,” which did not have the desired ring. “Employee free choice,” is the official name of the bill, which is equally hilarious, seeing as how its purpose was to bar the customary means of expressing free choice. As things stand now, when a union wants to organize a private workplace it solicits employees to sign cards indicating their desire for union representation. If 30 percent or more sign, the employer has the option to call for an election, which is conducted by secret ballot under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Board. Unions weren’t winning enough of those elections, and given their steady decline in membership — from 25 percent down to 7 percent of the private workforce in the past 30 years — they wanted a surer thing. They wanted to prevail if a majority of workers signed their cards, which is of course done not in the privacy of a voting booth but anywhere a worker might be buttonholed, including on his front porch by a couple of guys with meat hooks in their mitts. A bill to “make it easier for unions to organize” is how sympathetic media outlets like The New York Times characterized the bill, while downplaying the awkward little detail of doing away with elections. I am by no means one to bash The New York Times as a liberal propaganda sheet, as the dingdongs of the right do, but really, to whitewash this flagrantly anti-democratic bill as merely one to make it easier for unions to organize must merit some kind of mockery. The unions have claimed that in the run-up to an election, workers are vulnerable to intimidation by their employers, who try to scare them out of voting for the union, but it was clear they just wanted their own intimidation to take precedence. That the Democratic Party has supported this insult to democracy, from President Obama down to your local congressman, tells you a lot about the party, just as it tells you a lot about the Republican Party that its rank and file whoop and cheer for guns and God in the same breath. .................>>>>............>>>>...........http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01101
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