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Online Roundup: The High-Price Campaign Against Employee Free Choice |
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It’s been a big week, with the Employee Free Choice Act being introduced in the House and Senate. This vital bill is closer than ever to passing into law, giving workers the freedom to form unions and bargain without corporate intimidation and harassment.
Naturally, this means big corporations and their shady front groups are firing up the spin machine, hoping to distract, distort and mislead the public, the press and elected officials. Here’s a roundup of the big-money, anti-Employee Free Choice Act campaign, and the pro-worker community’s efforts to fight back.
- Art Levine takes a look at the Big Business panic over the fact that the Employee Free Choice Act could pass and restore workers’ freedom to choose for themselves how to join a union.
- Want to know the details about how much corporations are spending to fight the bill? In addition to the $72 million that The Hill reported Big Business spent last year for TV ads against the bill, the Washington Independent reports that corporate PACs gave out $365 million in campaign contributions last cycle. And millions of those business donations went straight to the most virulently anti-Employee Free Choice Act members of Congress.
- Speaking of getting what you pay for, a management-funded study has gotten a lot of chatter for its implication that increased union membership could lead to increased unemployment. The Institute for Southern Studies neatly dismembers that study, which was paid for by the Chamber of Commerce and other anti-Employee Free Choice corporate-funded groups and written by management consultant Anne Layne Farrar. The institute’s researchers determine that the conclusions reached in the study are an exaggerated reading based on narrow, scanty data.
Not only have media sources failed to identify who’s backing the study—they’ve also been slow to look into Layne-Farrar’s claims and methodology, which are based entirely on decades-old data from a handful of Canadian provinces….
Even as a piece of business research-for-hire, Layne-Farrar’s study is shockingly weak—based on a thin set of old and irrelevant data that doesn’t even bear out her own conclusions.
In addition, economist Dean Baker takes a closer look at that study and finds it’s contradicted not just by the most obvious surface facts—Canada has a higher rate of union membership but a lower unemployment rate than the United States—but also by decades of serious research showing that union membership isn’t correlated with unemployment.
- At Daily Kos, diarist PaulVA explores the Associated Builders and Contractors, another visciously anti-union organization that’s dumping big money into the fight against the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Matt Singer of Left in the West gets to see corporate opposition firsthand. He put up a post Wednesday about the Montana Chamber of Commerce kicking its disinformation campaign into high gear, and today he once again cuts through some of that disinformation to clarify what the bill actually does.
- The Center for American Progress Action Fund offers a very useful primer on the Employee Free Choice Act—why it’s needed, what it does and what the facts are behind the cloud of myths and misinformation injected into the debate by corporate cronies.
- And speaking of busting myths, Media Matters reports there are actual facts, and then there are Fox News facts. Don’t confuse them!
- At The American Prospect, Tim Fernholz catches the Chamber of Commerce once again threatening to ship jobs overseas if it’s too easy for workers to exercise the freedom to bargain.
- Fresh off a great appearance on Bloomberg News, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka got a chance to talk about workers and the economy this morning on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” And don’t miss Steelworkers President Leo Gerard appearing on Tuesday’s “1600″ on MSNBC.
- And finally, despite the high-profile smear campaigns, the Obama administration continues to strongly support the freedom to form unions and bargain. Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, had this to say at the Brookings Institute this morning:
If we want to propel this economy forward and we want to have a sound expansion, it has to be an expansion whose benefits are more broadly shared.
…it goes to the question of having a healthy and well-functioning trade union movement. And I think it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the way in which our labor laws have functioned, and have been enforced and been acted on over many years, have not been constructive from the point of view of having a healthy trade union movement. And an attempt to redress that balance seems to me something that is appropriate at such a time.
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The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace BUSTED Talking out of Two Sides of Their Mouth about The Employee Free Choice Act EFCA!
FRIDAY THE 13TH IS HERE: The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace BUSTED Talking out of Two Sides of Their Mouth about The Employee Free Choice Act EFCA!
Coalition for a Democratic Workplace Calls on Senator Lincoln and Senator Nelson to Clarify Their Positions on The Employee Free Choice Act EFCA.
The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace continues to spend millions of dollars on insisting that the Employee Free Choice Act would eliminate a “Secret Ballot” election (Which is a LIE).
However in Two Separate press releases today, The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace is calling Senator Lincoln and Nelson to Clarify Their Positions on The Employee Free Choice Act EFCA. PRESS BELOW For The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace Press Release on Senator Lincoln
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-13-2009/0004988269&EDATE=
Here is The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace Press Release on Senator Nelson Press Here
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-13-2009/0004988342&EDATE=
The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace Shouldn’t Senators Lincoln and Senator Nelson have the RIGHT to have Their Positions Remain Private?
Something Like a “Secret Ballot” election?
Or does The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace believe that Employer Intimidation, Coercion , and FEAR Tactics used everyday by Employers in Union Busting campaigns is the way to go?
The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace WHICH IS IT?
“YOU can’t have it both ways by Saying We Need A Secret Ballot Then You Take the Intimidation, Coercion , and FEAR Tactic Postion Asking Them to State Their Positions”
Do YOU Prefer Senators Lincoln and Nelson to Clarify Their Position on the Employee Free Choice Act through the use of Employer Intimidation, Coercion , and Union Busting FEAR Tactics?
Or Do YOU Prefer Senator Lincoln and Nelson NOT to Clarify Their Positions on The Employee Free Choice Act by allowing them to remain Silent by using The “Secret Ballot” Option?
BREAKING NEWS: The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace NOW Calls on Senator Specter to Clarify his Position on the Employee Free Choice Act Press Below
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-13-2009/0004988372&EDATE=
BREAKING NEWS: The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace NOW Calls on Senator Pryor to Clarify his Position on the Employee Free Choice Act Press Below
http://sev.prnewswire.com/travel/20090313/DC8363713032009-1.html
The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace With ALL The Millions Your Spending on This Anti-Union Busting Campaign Against The Employee Free Choice Act EFCA Why Don’t You Just Call in Your TV Spokesperson ” Johnny Sacks” and Threaten The Whole Senate?
Wait I Forgot YOUR FOR “Secret Ballot” Elections! Happy Friday 13TH!
http://www.TheTruthAboutEFCA.Org
http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/
http://efcaunionbustingclub.blogspot.com/
http://www.FreeChoiceActNow.Org
http://www.LaborUnionResources.Org
http://www.SPFPA.Org
For more information on Employer Intimidation and Union-Busting FEAR Tactics Press Below
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/2009/02/just-say-no-to-employee-free-choice-act.html
The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace is made up of more than 500 associations and organizations from every state across the nation that have joined together to protect a worker’s right to a private ballot when deciding whether to join a union. In 2008, CDW embarked on a multi-million dollar public education campaign in key states that included polling, television, radio and internet ads and direct mail. For more information and a listing of our membership, MyPrivateBallot.com.
Tags: Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, Employee Free Choice Act, EFCA, Free Choice Act, The Truth about EFCA, My Private Ballot, The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace,Navigators Global, Blanche Lincoln, Senator Lincoln Arkansas
Posted by Employee Free Choice Act Now . Org at 4:11 PM
Labels: Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, EFCA, Employee Free Choice Act, Free Choice Act, Lincoln Blanche, My Private Ballot, Navigators Global, The Truth About EFCA
Has any one heard any reasopnablwe justification for employers to be involved in how employees unionize? It boggles my mind that the law gives them that ability.
Today I posted to Union Review another piece about online activism: http://unionreview.com/union-activism-online-%2526amp%3B-employee-free-choice-act … and how more of us need to get on some of the sites that are dealing with the Employee Free Choice Act and get heard.
One of the things that I seem to be saying over and over in comments at various sites and in discussions with friends is that I am blown away that anyone can think that corporate America really cares about a worker’s democratic rights. Since when?
I think that we need to let folks know, who are not in unions, what it is like to organize a union in this country. What kind of retaliation workers are faced with. I think we should keep posting the accounts of the workers who showed up at the last Employee Free Choice Act rally, and maybe someone will hear this in a different light.
today reading about how a.i.g. must be allowed to give out millions in bounuses because of binding contract agreements with its employees is ridiculous. the same senators and congress people who stand yp for this are the same who said that the u.a.w. must cut their pay and benefits and did the same to the airline workers retirement funds. when will the double standards end!these politicians who say one thing for wall street and another for working people must think that anyone who works for a living on a job site,plant,or with their hands are stupid and will take any kind of lies as truth if it comes from congress.the days of screwing over working people must end now!also citi group hosting an anti e.f.c.a. seminar is more of the same idea of the ultra rich are always right and the workers must be taught the place 18th century mentality that helped get us into this fine fiscal mess