The Employee Free Choice Act could provoke a constitutional challenge if it becomes law. That’s what University of Chicago Law School professor Richard A. Epstein concludes after reviewing the proposal from a legal perspective. Writing in Regulation magazine, Epstein finds there are several constitutional problems with the act, also known as card check. For example, Epstein finds that because it f... Read more »
The proposal to conduct union organizing through a public card signing process is surely the most infamous provision of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. In fact, it’s where the bill gets its better-known nickname, “card check.” The provision has come under fire because of its obvious potential to harm workers by denying them the privacy and protection of a secret ballot election. It’s a wel... Read more »
For months, we’ve heard from politicians, pundits, and the press about the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card check. Ever wonder what ordinary people think about the plan to replace secret ballots with a public sign-up and put federal bureaucrats in charge of workplace contracts? Check out these letters to the editors of newspapers across America … From Pennsylvania: “Just as bad, the Ca... Read more »
The controversial card check scheme continues to draw bipartisan opposition, and for good reason. Its forced government contracts – compulsory interest arbitration, in government-speak – are drawing particular scrutiny, with serious questions being raised about their impact on workers, businesses, and the economy. Today’s Roll Call contains an essay from R. Theodore Clark Jr., a senior partner at ... Read more »
They say that timing is everything, and now is a really bad time to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The Associated Press reported today that eight – count ‘em, eight – states saw record unemployment rates in May. “The Labor Department says 48 states and the District of Columbia saw employment conditions deteriorate last month. The fallout from the longest recession since World War II was the wo... Read more »
In this era of government-run banks, insurers, and car companies, it is unfortunately not a surprise that another government bailout may be in the offing. An editorial in today’s Washington Examiner looks at the looming pension funding crisis among multi-employer pension plans and speculates about how pending card check legislation could put taxpayers, workers, and businesses in the position of ba... Read more »
Cesar Chavez is an icon of the American labor movement for successfully organizing farm workers in the 1960s and 1970s. But how did he become so successful? One of the reasons may have been his insistence on the right to form unions by secret ballot – a right many workers would be denied under the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, a bill better known as card check. When California lawmakers intr... Read more »
America is a nation founded on freedom, but Alaska National Guard Staff Sergeant Phillip Newton sees some of those basic freedoms eroding under the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, now pending in Congress: "When I joined the U.S. military, I did so because I wanted to protect the freedoms we take for granted — the freedom to vote, to find a job to support a family, to speak freely, and to do th... Read more »
Workers worried about their right to privacy in choosing to unionize or their right to vote on a contract may have breathed a collective sigh of relief over the weekend when a Democratic Senator pronounced the controversial card check plan “dead.” Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR), one of a handful of Senate Democrats who have balked at a plan that detractors view as an assault on workers’ rights and econ... Read more »
Ever wonder what workplace life might look like under the so-called Employee Free Choice Act? The prospect is contemplated in an essay that appeared this week in the Central Maine Morning Sentinel: “Under EFCA, each signature is a public vote and the only vote, conducted in the open, with the full view and knowledge of their fellow workers, management and the union organizers. “Imagine for a momen... Read more »
