It’s the bottom of the ninth inning for supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act – and they are getting desperate. With only a few weeks left in the legislative season, the AFL-CIO swung for the fences this week by co-sponsoring a full-page pro-EFCA ad in three Capitol Hill newspapers. It featured the ad’s other co-sponsor, another notable labor union. Was that union the Teamsters? The Internati... Read more »
Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the top Republican on the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee, issued the following statement today in response to the Obama Administration’s claims about job creation resulting from the so-called economic stimulus package enacted earlier this year: “The Administration’s rosy projections of jobs ‘saved or created’ by their near-trillion dollar government spending spree... Read more »
They tried mail-in ballots and even considered voting by Internet. But in the end, residents of a small Canadian city wanted to go back to the best method of voting: secret ballot. City elders in Clarington, Ontario, voted to restore the secret-ballot method for the 2010 local elections after hearing from a number of residents concerned about the “unsupervised” nature of both mail-in and online vo... Read more »
Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the top Republican on the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee, issued the following statement today in response to the release of yet another health care proposal from House Democrats: “America’s health care system needs reform. To accomplish that goal, the American people deserve a thoughtful, open, bipartisan debate about how best to bring down costs, expand access t... Read more »
Opening Statement of Rep. John Kline (R-MN), Senior Republican Member Worker safety and health are among the most fundamental concerns of every employer in this country. No worker wants to risk illness or injury on the job – and no employer wants that risk either. Recognizing that different states have different workplace needs, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act allows states to crea... Read more »
A recent MediaNews Group editorial that appeared in California’s Contra Costa Times praised Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her reluctance to support the Employee Free Choice Act, whose card check provision is a “slap in the face to democratic principles.” The newspaper chain makes an effective case against legislation to do away with secret ballot unionizing elections. Its arguments echo the concerns o... Read more »
Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the top Republican on the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee, today joined colleagues to warn against harmful benefit cuts and federal intrusion into seniors’ health care decisions that would result from a government takeover of the nation’s health care system. With Democrats proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to the Medicare program, Kline cautioned th... Read more »
There are four ways for Congress and President Obama to create more jobs in America – and one of them is to “renounce” the Employee Free Choice Act. That’s what University of Chicago economics professor Steven J. Davis says in a recent essay for Forbes magazine. Davis writes that instead of extending unemployment benefits or pursuing other policies that would drive up the deficit, lawmakers should... Read more »
With recent figures at 9.4 percent, 9.7 percent, and 9.8 percent, how high will the national unemployment rate go? It’s a question that should give supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act pause. Here are some grim details of the September unemployment figures, courtesy of The New York Times: “During the technology boom of the late 1990s, Mr. Lamirande, 62, worked for I.B.M., where he drew a sal... Read more »
Although the Employee Free Choice Act has been tied up for months in Congress, we already have an idea what one federal agency thinks about “card check,” a key part of the legislation. Its verdict? “Unreliable.” In September, The Washington Times reported that the Legal Services Corp., which provides grants to legal-aid groups that help the poor, determined the card check method of organizing to b... Read more »
