Card Check Comes to Congress

As most are aware, the dreaded Employee Free Anti-Choice Act or Card Check was introduced in the House and Senate today.  The timing has been uncertain for a while, but everyone knew it was coming.  Luckily, FreedomWorks is prepared.

We have the Top 10 Reasons to Reject Card Check and a sweet new website: NoCardCheck.com, where you can sign a petition, send a letter to the editor, and tell Congress you oppose this legislation.

Everyone seems pretty familiar with the first half of the bill – a plan to take away workers’ rights to a secret ballot vote on joining a union.  But far less time has been spent fighting against the equally bad second half of the legislation that would create government-run workplaces. Heritage has done some excellent research on card check and this piece is a must-read.  Study author James Sherk does a great job of explaining not only how government imposed contracts will hurt businesses by taking away their decision making powers, but this type of non-arbitration hurts workers as well who won’t have the benefit of promotions, bonuses, the right to strike or vote down a contract, and any of the other day-to-day decisions workers make regarding their careers and their futures.

EFCA does more than take away workers’ rights to vote in privacy.  It also gives control of the workplace to government bureaucrats.  Government officials would write the collective bargaining agreements of most newly organized companies.  The government would set not just wages and benefits but all business operations that significantly affect workers, such as promotion procedures, retirement plans, health benefits, subcontracting, mergers, work assignments, even the machines used to run a plant.  Employers would lose the ability to pursue their business strategies, and workers would lose all say about their workplace for two years.  EFCA effectively constitutes a government takeover of America’s workplaces.

Some people have been asking, what does the card in card check look like?  Once again, Heritage has a copy with the agreement to have the union represent workers buried in fine print amongst other paragraphs.  The card is from a great blog post and video about how unions will use card check to manipulate voters with information straight from a former UFCW organizer.  The video highlighting all the techniques unions have used to manipulate workers and the outright fraud approved by the government  is incredibly enlightening.  Everyone who cares about workplace freedom should watch this clip.

As the fight goes forward, it’s important to remember how things will go down in the Senate.  The Hill’s blog takes a good look at this.  The cloture vote will be the real battle and as the post explains, we’ll have to hold the line.

That is why it is important for the public to understand what can be a complex legislative process. If any moderate Senators are looking for “political cover” by supporting cloture but opposing the bill, it cannot be granted. When Senate Democrats face the voters in 2010 and beyond they will not be allowed to skate by claiming that “they voted for the bill before they voted against it.” While our legislative process may sometimes be complicated, in this case it must be made cut and dry. On EFCA, a vote for cloture is a vote against the right of millions of American employees to choose their union by secret ballot.