Although the Employee Free Choice Act has (thankfully) not become law yet, some workers – including those in New Hampshire – are already getting a taste of the act’s damaging effects, courtesy of federal Project Labor Agreements. Project Labor Agreements were mostly banned during the Bush administration because of concerns that they drove up federal contracting costs while discriminating against p... Read more »
The perils of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act are well known: it’s a job killer that tramples workers’ rights and threatens small businesses. Equally well known are the motives behind the act: special interest union leaders are spending millions to change the way workers organize, a move that would dramatically increase their size and political clout. But while EFCA watchers have kept their... Read more »
If you want to know why the Employee Free Choice Act slipped into a legislative coma, ask Peter D. Conrad. Conrad wrote an essay for The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel explaining in detail how the act, which began with great promise thanks to presidential support and a Democratic-led Congress, has become mercifully inert for U.S. workers. The reasons range from a strong bipartisan defense of the s... Read more »
If you believe its supporters, the Employee Free Choice Act should have been a done deal a long time ago. With presidential support and Democrats controlling large majorities in both chambers of Congress, it would be easy to assume EFCA was on its way to enactment in the opening days of the 111th Congress. But fortunately for American workers, opposition to EFCA is not the purely partisan matter i... Read more »
The national unemployment rate ticked up to 9.8 percent in September as the U.S. continued to struggle with the worst economic downturn in decades. The job loss is worse than experts had predicted; The New York Times has the grim economic details here: “The American economy shed another 263,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, reinforcing a broad assumption that man... Read more »
Predicting the fate of the Employee Free Choice Act has been difficult lately for the act’s supporters. Senate Democrats were once quite confident the act could pass and become law. After all, on paper, they had the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster of the job-killing bill. Indeed, EFCA’s chances seemed sunny. But then clouds began to appear on the horizon: It turned out that several Democrats ... Read more »
The secret ballot is important not only to people in the United States. It’s important around the world, too. In New Zealand, National MP Tau Henare, a former union organizer, recently proposed a bill to make use of the secret ballot the official law in the island nation near Australia. The New Zealand Herald gives details of Henare’s measure here: “Unions will be legally bound to hold a secret ba... Read more »
Even if Democrats eventually decide to jettison the unpopular card check component that sets aside the secret ballot for workers, the Employee Free Choice Act is still dangerous. That’s what a group of Hoosier business executives wrote in a Sunday essay for The Star Press in Muncie, Ind.: “Some have talked about removing the secret ballot provision of S560, but the other provisions are equally dam... Read more »
Has the House Democrat health care legislation become so toxic that members of the President’s own party are now denying its very existence? Apparently so. “During remarks this morning at the Finance Committee markup, there were references to the ‘House bill.’ Baucus quickly corrected the record. “‘There is no House Bill at this point,’ Baucus said. ‘There are committees looking at bills, I only s... Read more »
President Obama is on an important mission this week – and its success depends on the secret ballot. The irony is worthy of a gold medal: After all, the Employee Free Choice Act, which Obama supports, sets aside the secret ballot for workers. The Washington Post gives the play by play here: “President Obama has decided to travel to Copenhagen to support the Chicago bid team seeking the 2016 Summer... Read more »
