Here we go again. A presidential election is on the horizon, and Democrats are on the campaign trail touting Big Labor’s prized
card check scheme. That was reportedly one topic former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and labor leaders discussed at a private meeting last week. According to the left-leaning
People’s World news site, Secretary Clinton told the AFL-CIO Executive Council:
“I believe worker power is vital to increasing incomes ... I was an original co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act while I was in the Senate and will do everything I can to pass it" if elected to the Oval Office, she declared.
And Secretary Clinton is not alone. In an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, here is how Senator Bernie Sanders proposed increasing the ranks of dues-paying union members:
You do that by passing legislation which makes it easier for workers to join unions. Right now it is pretty hard … Right now employers are able to take workers, put them in a private room, threaten them that if this company becomes union we're moving to China, or say that if you try and organize the union, well, you've been late lately, I'm afraid we'll have to fire you.
I think we have to make it easier. There's legislation — which I support — the Employee Free Choice Act that says if 50 [percent of] workers in an agency plus one sign a union card, they have a union. And I believe in that.
Of course, Senator Sanders forgot to mention that the conduct he described is both unacceptable and already unlawful. He also forgot to mention the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act has always been highly unpopular with the American public. More accurately known as card check, this undemocratic idea would effectively strip workers of their right to a secret ballot when deciding whether to join a union. It would destroy jobs and expose workers to greater coercion and intimidation.
Perhaps that’s why card check supporters never mustered the votes in Congress to pass the bill, but they’ve taken their forced unionization campaign to the president’s political appointees at the National Labor Relations Board. In recent years, the NLRB’s anti-worker agenda has included such pro-union schemes as:
It seems Big Labor is never satisfied, which might explain why Democrats are falling back on the same rhetoric they’ve used time and again to win the support of union bosses. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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