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The Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Bizarre Corporate Panic over Workers’ Rights Award |
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The wing nuts speaking for Corporate America are getting—well, wing nuttier. Their anti-worker, anti-union lies and distortions about the Employee Free Choice Act have reached just plain bizarre levels.
Now it’s your turn to weigh in: Who deserves the Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Bizarre Corporate Panic over Workers’ Rights Award? The award will go to the corporate mouthpiece that spews the most outrageous claims about the Employee Free Choice Act—proposed federal legislation that strikes fear in the heart of corporate giants because it would restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
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I don’t think this is necessarily true:
“would restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.”
Accusing anti-EFCA peeps of distortion isn’t going to get you anywhere if you also distort the facts!
Workers are free to form unions and bargain. Those rights are protected by the NLRB. EFCA makes it easier to form unions and imposes some new rules. Abolishing the secret ballot (which I have heard may be struck from the bill), in my opinion, actually takes away the freedom to choose for many American workers. Employees could be forced into working in a union shop who never got a chance to vote on it!
What is scarier for corporate America, in my opinion, is the possibility of Federal arbitrators binding both sides to a contract for two years. That and the increased penalties EFCA would impose.
The Employee Free Choice Act will not not, take away the ballot election for workers considering whether to join a union. Rather, the Employee Free Choice Act will give workers, rather than management, the choice of whether to vote on unionization via ballot or to indicate their support to join a union via majority sign up (also called “card check.”)
Here’s the text of Employee Free Choice Act bill:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.800:
Can you point to where it says a ballot will be taken away?
First I would like to reply to your statement about,
“Employees could be forced into working in a union shop who (that) never got a chance to vote on it!”
What difference is that from a new employee going to a work for an employer where there is a union shop already in place? That employee doesn’t get to vote to accept it before they start to work. And that only applies to states that have close shop laws. If it’s a state with right to work laws, that new employee wouldn’t have to join the union even if one was in place.
Next about,
“What is scarier for corporate America, in my opinion, is the possibility of Federal arbitrators binding both sides to a contract for two years. That and the increased penalties EFCA would impose.”
No, what is currently scarier is that corporate America can get away with stall tactics that can keep a legitimately formed unions from getting any kind of contract for 2 years or even longer and not be held accountable when they do it.
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Card check is what I am talking about. If 50% of workers plus one worker sign a card, the union can be certified by the NLRB without an election. That could be leaving 49.999999% of the workers never had the chance to express their feelings on a union. EFCA effectively eliminates secret ballot organizing elections. The argument that EFCA simply gives the workers the choice between organizing using secret ballots or publicly signed cards is false. Nothing in the legislation gives gives workers any control over union organizing tactics. Union can call for an election when cards have been signed by 30% of workers. But in practice, this wouldn’t happen. The decision is left to union organizers, not the workers. And why would they call for an election when a card check would certify the union with no delay?
Unions win recognition in over 60% of elections. Unions openly state that they don’t go into elections without a majority of cards signed. But that means in 40% of those employers, the majority of workers did not want a union. The cards did NOT reflect the workers’ desires when they were able to vote privately. Under EFCA, 100% of those employers would be unionized. It’s not right to certify a union without each worker having the ability to speak up.
I feel that taking away the secret ballot via the card check provision is undemocratic. I have been keeping up with this legislation and it’s my understanding that the card check provision is the most likely part of this legislation to fall in order to press through the other parts of the plan. Unions still win the majority of elections.
Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers would get to choose whether to use card-check or ballot election. Right now, managers make the choice. Workers, not management, should have that choice.
These are bizarre comments from a bizarre political party. Or, to put it more accurately, a phoney party. Just another example, Seth, of the mentality of this selfish, self centered, self righteous Republican party. I am even getting tired of calling them “Republicans” anymore. But, everyone is on to them now. The more ridiculous comments they make, the better. They are self destructing themselves.
I hadn’t heard these latest comments about the employee free choice act. I have gotten three comments on my own blog Philadelphia Progressive Examiner. I wrote about the Employee Free Choice Act as ending the banana republic dictatorship called work. One of the commenters, even though in the body of the article it stated that employees still could chose secret ballot elections. still believed this was being taken away. I guess his only functional brain cell was still attached to Limbaugh.
EFCA provides that workers choose which way to measure the support for a union, nothing more. Under existing law, employers were free to recognize a union by card check if they so desired. Few employers accepted a union by card check, because they knew that defeating an organizing drive consisted of literally “scaring” up NO votes for the union.
If employers are so respectful of democracy in the workplace, wjy don’t they hold binding secret ballot votes to govern it? Would they recognize an election to keep our jobs at home? To enact a pay raise for the workers? We all know the answers to these questions.
Thieir concept of democracy amounts to us chickens versus Colonel Sanders…