If You Like EFCA, You'll Love Its Siblings

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would allow union organization merely by the collection of enough signatures--called card check--instead of secret ballots, has been stirring up a hornet's nest of business opposition.

Now, a University of Chicago Law School professor named Richard Epstein has even come out in print blasting the EFCA as unconstitutional on both First and Fifth Amendment grounds. I think he's stretching the First Amendment gambit a bit, but the argument based on the "takings" clause of the Fifth may carry more legal weight.

The takings argument involves the EPCA's provision calling for binding arbitration in case the employer and new union can't agree on a contract. Epstein argues that an arbitrator could mandate provisions that would put the company out of business (setting wages and benefits too high, etc.), and this would invoke the takings-clause protection of the Fifth Amendment.

Anyway, unless the law passes, we'll never get a review of its constitutionality, but in the meantime employers and business owners have a whole panolpy of other liberal-leaning legislation to fear and oppose.

Let's look at some of them:

RESPECT Act: Redefines how much time a person must spend supervising to be categorized a supervisor to make more employees eligible for unionization while shrinking the ranks of potential opponents.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: Gets a tad technical but basically stretches the time frame for filing discrimination claims almost into infinity.

Employment Non-Discrimination Act: Adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes.

Civil Rights Act of 2008: A grab bag of statutory changes that prohibits mandatory arbitration agreements between employees and employers and removes caps on monetary claims in lawsuits, among other far-ranging goodies.

Working Families Flexibility Act: Reguires good faith negotiations with any employee who desires a different work schedule--days of work, hours of work and location of work. (Makes it hard for the employer to say no as well.)

FOREWARN Act: Takes the WARN Act (see recent Republic Windows and Doors incident) and lowers coverage to companies with 50 or more employees (down from 100), raises advance-notice of layoffs/closing bar to 90 days, and doubles the amount of pay for employees if proper advanced notice isn't given.

Like I said, if you like EPCA, you'll love the whole mix of legislative goodies coming down the pike.