Secret Ballot Watch

Call it “Attack of the EFCA Clones.” Like a flying saucer in a science fiction movie, the Employee Free Choice Act has been hovering over the Capitol for months. Thanks to bipartisan opposition, though, it hasn’t attacked the U.S. economy yet. But measures similar to EFCA are staging economic assaults that are equally troubling. Take federal Project Labor Agreements. Popular among EFCA backers, th... Read more »

It seems there’s more than one way to meddle with organizing elections at the expense of workers. While most of Capitol Hill’s attention has been on the misleadingly named Employee Free Choice Act – with its ability to kill jobs, set aside the secret ballot, and crush small businesses – there’s another attempt to rig organizing elections underway in a little-known federal agency. The Wall Street J... Read more »

Picking up where we left off last week with the list of 10 more reasons the so-called Employee Free Choice Act must fail is an obvious indicator of legislative doom: The act has drawn the ire of elected officials on both sides of the political divide. Although the act’s supporters don’t highlight this fact, it’s not just Republicans opposing EFCA. More than a few Democrats oppose the job-killing b... Read more »

As we pointed out yesterday, there’s plenty of opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. So who has been pressuring lawmakers to keep it alive in Congress? Mostly, the heads of some of the nation’s largest labor unions. They have a lot riding on EFCA, especially their future as a major force in Washington. Bloomberg News columnist Albert R. Hunt laid it all out recently in The New York Times her... Read more »

Don’t even think about installing card check in California. Or for that matter, just about anywhere else. States from coast to coast have been actively working to thwart the Employee Free Choice Act or state versions of the bill that’s now sitting in Congress. One of the more recent blows happened in the Golden State. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed – for the fourth time – a card check proposal ... Read more »

Sen. Sherrod Brown is not happy with a “compromise” version of the Employee Free Choice Act – and he’s one of the act’s key negotiators. This says a lot about EFCA’s so-called compromise even though details haven’t been officially announced yet. The Ohio Democrat admitted his dissatisfaction with EFCA – and the bill’s chances – to The Hill recently here: “In an interview with The Hill, Brown said ... Read more »

Kicking off the countdown of 10 more reasons the so-called Employee Free Choice Act must fail is a look at why – when it comes to jobs and workers’ rights – there can be no compromise. With EFCA seemingly stalled in the Senate, supporters have been suggesting “compromises” to the bill – including dropping its dreaded “card check” provision. But as several observers have pointed out, these “comprom... Read more »

Over the summer, we offered 10 reasons why the Employee Free Choice Act should fail. It was a good list, but incomplete. You see, EFCA has the potential to wreak such havoc on our economy and workers’ rights that it’s not difficult to find yet another 10 reasons why it should fail: 10. Substituting one bad idea for another is not a “compromise.” 9. A key EFCA negotiator is “not happy” with the “co... Read more »

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 »