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Secret Ballot Watch

Coalition of Minority Business Groups Latest to Voice Opposition to Anti-Worker Card Check Plan

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 7, 2009 | Alexa Marrero ((202) 225-4527)
Members of Congress home for the two week district work period may have escaped the Washington echo chamber, but they can’t escape the nationwide echo of opposition to the anti-worker card check plan. Just yesterday, a coalition of minority business groups became the latest to raise their voices in opposition to the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that actually takes away workers’ ability to freely choose whether to form a union through a secret ballot vote.

According to the group’s press release, “the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Black Hotel Owners Operators and Developers and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association have united to educate the minority community and members of Congress about the negative impacts of this bill.”

Fox News picked up the story— 

“The Employee Free Choice Act, or ‘card check’ legislation, will decimate minority-owned small businesses, minority business leaders argued Monday

“Speaking at the National Press Club, the group said the bill, which will eliminate secret ballots for workers voting on organizing union shops, will cause job losses and is ‘un-American.’ …

“Harry Alford of the National Black Chamber of Commerce said the business leaders are not going to rest despite claims that the bill does not have the support it needs to pass on Capitol Hill.

“Two past supporters of a similar bill -- Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa. -- both said last week they would not vote for the legislation in its current form, cutting out critical backing needed for passage.

“‘We're not going to go to sleep on it. They've got big bucks,’ he said of the bill's backers, which includes many of the nation's largest unions. ‘We will not compromise disaster. This is war ... We're going to fight this.’”

“Minority Business Owners Give Card Check Another Kick in the Head,” Fox News, 04.06.09 

Republicans have been saying all along that the more the public learns about this legislation, the more toxic it will become. If this latest effort is any indication, the public is about to learn a lot more about this undemocratic, special interest power grab. And they’re not going to like what they hear.

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