SEARCH
Beware of the Big Lie Bill |
|
 |
|
Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress made their Big Lie into a bill Wednesday, when Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Mike Enzi (Wyo.) introduced the so-called Secret Ballot Protection Act.
Before we go further, let’s clear up the bill’s false implication right now:
The Employee Free Choice Act would not—repeat after me—would not, take away the secret ballot National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process if workers seeking to form a union wanted to use it. The Employee Free Choice would ensure workers made the decision of whether to select a union via majority sign-up (card-check) or via ballot process. Choice is good. That’s one reason why we called it Employee Free Choice—because it would enable employees, not management, to make the decision of how to form a union.
The alleged goal of S. 478 is to:
amend the National Labor Relations Act to ensure the right of employees to a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.
But the real objective of the DeMint-Enzi—and, of course, the autoworker-hating senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker—gang is to force senators to be on record in support of it before the Employee Free Choice Act is up for a vote and to get free PR for their lies.
In announcing the bill, DeMint put out his pseudo-gem massive lie:
“Card check” is completely unacceptable and un-American, and we must pass the Secret Ballot Protection Act to safeguard workers’ rights.
In fact, according to scientific national poll surveys, more than 75 percent of the American people actually want to have the free choice to join a workers/employees union by card-check union membership and by union signature card.
Since Enzi brought up “un-American,” let’s take a look at that term. Seems actions like providing health care for low-income children, ensuring America’s workers are paid overtime and have a safe workplace where they are not paid less because of their gender or race are all-American standards. But not so for DeMint. A quick look at his Senate voting record reveals DeMint’s lies:
- DeMint voted at least seven times against expanding health care for children (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program).
- DeMint voted three times against protecting overtime pay for millions of workers.
- DeMint opposed workplace safety standards.
- DeMint voted against Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps ensure workers are not paid less because of gender or race.
The same day the Big Lie bill was introduced, 39 great American economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, issued a statement supporting the Employee Free Choice Act as key to getting our nation’s economy back on its feet. Their statement says in part:
Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000—an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.
Yet as Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work, says:
At a time when more Americans are hurting financially than perhaps at any other time in our history, a small group of consistently anti-worker members of Congress are introducing legislation to make it harder for workers to negotiate for better pay and health care for themselves and their families. It is unconscionable that these Congressmen with six-figure salaries and guaranteed pensions choose to kick America’s workers when they are down. This ploy is no surprise, as they have voted against raising the minimum wage, expanding children’s health insurance and ensuring worker safety.
Here’s another lie the bill’s sponsors are pushing out, this via Think Progress:
DeMint took to Fox News to describe why he thinks his false firewall is necessary. Amidst his fraudulent rhetoric about Employee Free Choice eliminating the secret ballot, DeMint also incorrectly claimed that the act would harm small businesses:
And this is not just for big auto companies, this is for small electrical contractors, companies with 10 or 15 people. It would change the business model of the United States to the same model the U.S. auto industry has in Detroit.
As Think Progress points out, DeMint has this all wrong. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) excludes non-retail employers whose interstate commerce is less than $50,000 and retail employers whose gross annual volume is less than $500,000; there are various other size exemptions for all sorts of industries, from newspapers to taxicab companies. These exemptions would not change under the Employee Free Choice Act.
The list of the Big Lie’s bill co-sponsors (all Reactionaries) reads like a who’s who of senators who will meet the wrath of working families in coming elections: Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), Sam Brownback (Kan.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Jim Bunning (Ky.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Cornyn (Texas), Bob Corker (Tenn.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), John McCain (Ariz.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.), Roger Wicker (Miss.) and David Vitter (La.).
Because this group doesn’t have enough votes to get the bill anywhere, it’s all about making noise. And spreading their Big Lies.
This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.
9 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
the hatred of common working men and women shown by this group is truly sad
What else can you expect from these cretins who never got their hands dirty from earning real clean money! I’d like to take one of these scoundrels on a non prevailing wage job site and let them see and smell and have their heads reel from the lack of environmental control measures to protect the other trades and anyone who ventures into an area that is full of toxic vapors.
This is not just an attack against unions: it is an attack against anyone who works for a living who deserves a decent standard of living.
These assholes hot their health insurance so screw everyone else!
Get real there is nothing sad about it, its what they are really all about!
I don’t think that Corker hates autoworkers. He just wants them to be able to work for less money in his state.
Again it is not a question of who hates which set of workers. In NYC we have some folks who don’t want anyone to build or fix anything. I’m sure its like that all across the nation. What kills me is that with all our political smartness we are sometimes too scared to call them what they are. I can’t use the choice words I’d like to use for them because this is not a construction job site, but I am sick and tired of the naivate’ of some of us who believe leopards change their spots!
We got to stay on point and stay on message: The Employee Free Choice Act was supported by everyone we got elected and anyone one these politicians who turns there backs on us will have to face some consequences. Like visit them where they live at 6 A.M. and be there when they arrive at their office. Tie up the phone lines and bombbard their computers with so much that we burn out the hard drive!
We are in the middle of a fight and we can’t let our gaurds down now, Politicians are not the labor movement, they only like to use the labor movement to get elected and that is where Labor comes in: we have to remind them so they don’t forget!
Senator Jim DeMint is definitely anti-union and anti-labor and pro Big Business Monopoly as is the large majority of the southern states, most especially South Carolina.
The sad part is that he is one of my two U.S. Senators that refuses to belive that the Conservative and Republican parties lost big time on 11/04-08 and that they are still running things into the ground!
The thing that disturbs me most about your Senator referenced in the article above is his statement:
“Card check” is completely unacceptable and un-American, and we must pass the Secret Ballot Protection Act to safeguard workers’ rights for good.
Now, “card check” is currently included in the National Labor Relations Act. Does that mean that current Federal Labor Law is un-American? (I think not)
Sneak Attack: While Labor awaited for Solis’s nomination, Republicans Unveil Their Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) Bill Called The Secret Ballot Protection Act
(Better Know as The EMPLOYER FEAR and Intimidation Act)
Secret Ballot Protection Act The Republicans NO Employee Free Choice Act Bill
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/25/18573203.php
Republicans Unveil Bill to Guarantee EMPLOYERS
Right to a Secret Ballot Election…NOT Employees!
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 25, 2009
CONTACT: Alexa Marrero
(202) 225-4527
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. House of Representatives’ leading Republican voices on issues impacting American workers joined a key member of the U.S. Senate today to introduce legislation that will guarantee workers’ right to a secret ballot in union organizing elections. Their legislation, the Secret Ballot Protection Act, is a preemptive strike against legislation soon to be introduced by congressional Democrats to do away with secret ballot elections; instead, the Democrats’ legislation would force workers to make their vote public for all to see through a “card check” public sign-up process.
The Secret Ballot Protection Act was introduced by Reps. John Kline (R-MN)and Tom Price (R-GA), the top Republicans on the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee and the Workforce Protections Subcommittee, respectively.
They were joined in introducing the legislation by Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), the Labor Committee’s Senior Republican Member.
Companion legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).
“Secret ballots are a hallmark of American Democracy. They protect individuals - whether they are voters on election day or workers deciding whether to organize - from public pressure, intimidation, or post-vote retribution,” said McKeon. “The Secret Ballot Protection Act makes clear once and for all that no one should be able to deny workers the right to a secret ballot.”
The Secret Ballot Protection Act was introduced with 101 original cosponsors in the House.
For more information on Employer Intimidation and Union-Busting Tactics press Below
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/2009/02/just-say-no-to-employee-free-choice-act.html
For More Information on EFCA please visit our websites and blog
http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/
http://efcaunionbustingclub.blogspot.com/
http://www.FreeChoiceActNow.Org
http://www.LaborUnionResources.Org
Senator DeMint is clearly not well informed at all. You could try and educate him with the truth, but he makes it very difficult for constituents to contact him online. You would have to go over three different hurdles just to e-mail him a message to his web site. He is as extreme to the far right as they come…a bonafide, ultra-conservative Republican. He is up for re-election next year. It will be a steep, uphill climb to be able to unseat him in South Carolina.
I will do all that I can to help the EFCA become the law of the land.
-W³
AFSCME, Local 1199
As a Wyoming resident, for Senator Enzi to say the Employee Free Choice Act would be un-American is a slap in my face. What is truly un-American is the way our government has morphed in recent years to allow the stripping away of what were once solidified protected working LAWS and RIGHTS for Americans. The hardest part of conducting secret ballot elections anyways is that after Union Representatives (on behalf of those employees seeking representaion) request recognition from the employer, (most of the time denied) the current system allows employers to drag the election day out 42 days. This is when Employees are exposed to threats, being coerced, false promises, private interogations, bringing in Union-busters, etc. The hostile treatment of employees gets so bad at times it either forces them to surrender to the employer, quit, or many times get terminated for what are supposed to be LEGAL ACTIVITIES. What can Unions do to protect them in these cases? They can file Unfair Labor Practices but that has been weakened to the point of almost useless. Laws which once punished naughty employers for violations, are replaced with, at worst a slap on the hand and a notice being posted. This is a big reason why the proposed E.F.C.A has the option in it which would allow employees in a Union campaign the ability to broaden their options as to whether THEY choose to run a secret election or have a neutral party give a card count to justify majority. I will continue to back this legislation till it is seen through.