You Can't Kill It: EFCA Reintroduced in Congress

Despite the fact that there simply aren't enough votes in the Senate to end a filibuster on it, the Employee Forced Free Choice Act (EFCA) was reintroduced in both the House and the Senate on March 10.

The original corporate destroyers sponsors did the dirty work reintroductions: Representative George Miller of The People's Republic of California and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.

In case you've been in slumberland for a few years, the EFCA does away with organizing elections and forces unions on companies once more than 50 percent of their employees are forced to sign organizing cards. Then, it sics an arbitrator on the company to impose a collective bargaining agreement once the owners reject the outlandish demands of the union thugs bosses.

Might all be moot now anyway, what with Craig Becker on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Though he denied it during confirmation hearings, Becker believes the NLRB can simply impose EFCA-like provisions without congressional action.

One way or another, look for this monster to keep rearing its ugly head. (No, I wasn't referring to Becker, but....)

Dems Hope to 'Unionize' All Federal Contracts

If they can't get enough votes to pass the egregious Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), left-ish Democrats can get the White House and Department of Labor (DOL) to rig the rules so only union contractors get fed jobs.

The vehicle for this would replace the current institution of the prevailing wage, whereby the DOL dictates what wages must be paid for each contract, adjusted for the cost of living in the location of the work. However, this is evidently not enough for the left and its cronies in the unions. Now they want a "living" wage (presumably much higher than a prevailing wage), along with health and other benefits, sick days, and ad nauseum.

Here's a good explanation from what's called the EFCA Blog:

Labor and the White House are reportedly contemplating new rules – which have not yet been made public – to give unionized employers an advantage. Called the 'High Road Contracting Policy,' it would require the DOL (and all federal agencies) to create new bureaucracies to assess the labor-friendliness of bidding contractors. 'Prevailing wage' would be supplemented with standards of a 'living' wage, health insurance, employer-paid retirement benefits, paid sick days, and possibly more. Agency officials would give a subjective preference to contractors providing these higher levels of compensation. Applying these standards to those of area union contracts would instantly benefit union contractors.

Democracy in action.

EFCA by Stealth or Fiat?

In one of the few votes being taken this week in the U.S. Senate (due to inclement weather), Craig Becker was filibustered out of a chance to be voted into office with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), though I'm sure the cloture vote will be taken again, maybe many times.

Once ensconced at the NLRB, Becker hopes to issue diktats to implement the provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), bypassing both Congress (where there aren't enough votes) and the Constitution (where it says you need Congress to vote).

Anyway, it all may be moot since rumor has it that the Dems have slipped EFCA language into the looming "jobs bill," which is probably not even a jobs bill but a bunch of pork for the cronies back home.

Anyway, I thought this cartoon pretty well summed up the consequences of EFCA and "card check."

Joe Wilson to Arlen Specter: 'You Lie'

The specter of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is haunting newly minted Democratic Senator Arlen Specter so much that he's turned to making things up evidently.

At the AFL-CIO Convention this week in Pittsburgh, the former Republican maverick, who is now being threatened with extinction in the Democratic party by labor leaders if he doesn't support EFCA, announced that he had the 60 votes necessary to pass a revised EFCA.

However, no one else in the Senate appears to know of the deal, which Specter said would involve five-day elections instead of card check and "baseball" arbitration instead of open-ended arbitration (baseball arb empowers an arbitrator solely to choose either the "last best" contract offer from labor or the one from management).

Senate leader Harry Reid says he knows of no deal and furthermore thinks card check must be part of the final bill.

Best bet is that Specter is scared to death of Pennsylvania union activists siding with his Democratic challenger in the upcoming primary and of Big Labor sending millions to his opponent lest Specter deliver on EFCA.

A Switch in Time Saved Now, and Now This....

There's a famous saying about how "a switch in time saved nine" Supreme Court justices under FDR, who was threatening to pack the court unless it quit ruling his laws unconstitutional. When one judge switched to the liberals' side, it was just in time to save all of them.

Now, for all of us who consider the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) evil incarnate, it was an ill senator who saved the nation from the twin terrors of card check unionization and forced contract arbitration.

One of the EFCA's sponsors, Senator Tom Harkin (D.-Iowa), has revealed he had a deal in place in July to pass EFCA--with labor leaders set to descend on the capital to celebrate--when all he needed was just one more vote to reach the 60-vote cloture threshold. That vote belonged to the late Ted Kennedy, but when Harkin inquired of Kennedy's doctor if the senator could spend just three days in Washington, D.C., the answer was no; he's too ill.

Harkin wouldn't reveal what was in the deal:

"I will not say [what was in the bill] because it was closely held, it never leaked out and it still hasn't," Harkin said. "I took it off the front-burner and put it on the back-burner so it is still on warm, OK?"

Michael Moore Was Right: Card Check Was a Ruse

Mockumentarian and far-left spokesperson Michael Moore was right in saying several months ago that you could strip card check from the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and still have businesses where you want them--on their knees and begging government to bail them out.

That's because the mandatory arbitration clause in EFCA lives on without card check, and it's those faceless bureaucrats running arbitration who are the unions' best friend. They'll be more than happy to split the difference between a 3,000-percent pay raise demand and a 3-percent pay raise offer--and come up with 30 percent or more.

That's why it's not surprising that the Democrats pushing EFCA are now more than willing to jettison card check and instead mandate elections within five or ten days of getting 30 percent of employees to sign up for a union. That's the current state of "compromise" in the Senate. Card check, it turns out, was just a Trojan Horse to get contracts dictated by bureaucrats to Mom-and-Pop businesses, to say nothing of the ultimate goal, the total take-down of Wal-Mart.

"First, Detroit, and now Benton, Arkansas" may as well be the union battle cry.

They won't stop until there is no private enterprise left--and government runs everything.

Oh, sad, sad day.

Obama Admits Not Enough Votes for EFCA

President Obama told a town hall meeting yesterday in New Mexico that "there aren't enough votes in the Senate to get it passed," referring to the controversial Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or what's known as "card check."

“There may be areas of compromise to get this bill done,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “That’s what we’re working on.”

Filmmaker and radical liberal Michael Moore suggested months ago that the card check provision, which allows unionization through the collection of a majority of employees' signatures, could be jettisoned, and the bill would still accomplish its goal of strengthening unions.

Reason? Fines on employers (but not unions) would skyrocket, and employers would also have a gun held to their heads to cave into a contract within 90 days of unionization or have one crammed down their throats by an arbitrator.

In fact, card check may have been thrown into the bill just to assure passage through compromise of the other measures. Recent statistics show that unions win 67 percent of unionization votes, but that employers stall on the negotiations front so that only 56 percent of new unions ever get a signed contract. EFCA would solve that dilemma tidily for the unions.

My suggestion: Scrap the whole sorry piece of legislation and read this article on why unions already hold the advantage.

Obama Billionaire Backers Nix EFCA--Surprised?

Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha, was the first Obama-aire to come out against the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act) and its card-check unionization. Now he's been joined by three other Obama-backing billionaires (did you realize that the Democratic Party has a much higher concentration of voters who make more than $100,000 a year than the GOP has?). The three nay-sayers all hail from Chicago.

One, Penny Pritzker, a Hyatt zillionaire, actually ran Obama's campaign finance committee, the one that racked up about $750 million (with nine-figure contributions from unions) for the presidential campaign and another $53 million just for the inauguration.

Neil Bluhm, founder of the private equity firm Walton Street Capital and gatherer of $160,000 for the Obama campaign, just says no as well, and is joined by another billionaire, Lester Crown, who runs an eponymous investment firm. Crown gave the max personal contribution allowable under the law to Obama.

What took them so long, or did they just notice Obama's true stripes?

EFCA Sponsor Says Card Check May Go Bye-Bye

Senator Tom Harkin, D.-Iowa, says compromise is in order to save the Employee Free Choice Act, specifying that the card check provision will no doubt have to be dropped.

“Compromises are going to be made,” said Harkin, 69. “It probably won’t be card check [as part of the final law], because too many people are opposed to it now.”

Card check allows organizers to unionize a company by merely getting 50-percent-plus-one of the employees to sign off on the idea. No election need be held, but the union (har de har har) could still ask for one. Business is unilaterally opposed to it, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calling the EFCA "Armageddon."

(New York Governor David Paterson has already created card check in his state by fiat--executive order. Henceforth, all businesses receiving government assistance in just about any form in his state will be subject to card check unionization.)

Harkin said he's hoping that the compromise bill he's negotiating with fellow senators will win the "grudging support" of both labor and "some business."

For its part, labor says card check is non-negotiable and absolutely essential, and from the business side comes the stance that, even with card check gone, the EFCA is still Armageddonish with its binding arbitration provision.

The proposed law mandates a two-year binding contract be imposed if the company and union fail to agree upon a contract after 90 days of direct negotiations and another 30 days of mediation.

In the words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"

Evidently not.

Merging and Purging Their Way to Billions

I'm no fan of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), but the principle of organizing for better wages and benefits is a sound one--until it's abused. And union abuse is largely what doomed (along with better products from foreign competition) the so-called Big Three automakers in Detroit.

So, in unions you have a good thing in principle, and a bad thing in practice. Look at the routine corruption and power hunger at just about every union in America, and you'll see that the free pot of cash that unions blackmail out of the employees they bargain for affirms Lord Acton's observation that "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Anyway, the picture on the other side isn't any prettier. As much damage as the unions have done to industry in America, corporate chieftains have sent to their workplace graves millions of employees over the years.

Joseph Schumpeter called capitalism "creative destruction," and in any act of destruction, something is obviously destroyed--and that something in capitalism is workers' lives and livelihoods.

The sad fact is, for CEOs, destroying workers' lives through downsizing pays off big time. A study by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy (admittedly, two left-leaning groups) shows that CEOs for the 50 companies that did the most downsizing in 2001 averaged 44-percent pay raises the next year. In fact, compensation for downsizing CEOs grew seven times faster than for CEOs in general.

The CEO for Hewlett-Packard since 2005, Mark Hurd, over the years eliminated 40,000 jobs through 31 mergers and acquisitions and reaped a cool $60 million-plus in 2008 alone. Larry Ellison of Oracle, with a personal net worth of $22.5 billion, eliminated 5,000 good jobs with his acquisition of PeopleSoft in 2005 and looks to axe another 5,000-10,000 this year through his acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Now, to change the subject a bit and return to the plight of the Big Three: When I read over the weekend that the government would end up owning 50 percent of General Motors and the United Auto Workers most of the rest, it brought to mind this perceptive observation of Ronald Reagan's:

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

In the case of the Big Three, Washington and the Democrats not only ruined them with taxes but also with ridiculous regulations like CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy), which forced the automakers to build cars no Americans wanted to buy. Now with the Obamacrats owning GM, we'll end up with an American version of the Yugo--and with an automaker (or two) that will be forever subsidized by the federal government (in reality, by you, me and all the taxpayers, who will have no say whatsoever in the matter).

Reagan was and always will be right about taxes and government.

To preview GM's future, just take a gander at these Soviet-mandated cars for the masses now lying in a Russian boneyard:

Card Check Rears Its Ugly Head in California

I guess that headline shows my bias. Anyway, turns out that the Golden State (doesn't glitter too much anymore, though) legislature will soon send a bill to Ahnold's desk that would allow agricultural workers to form unions by card check.

Card check is the now-infamous method proposed in the federal Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that allows organizers to form unions by collecting signatures from 50 percent-plus-one of a firm's employees. The EFCA would enshrine the method nationwide, but that bill is locked in a pitched battle in the Senate.

New Jersey has a card check law, but it applies only to businesses that have no interstate commerce connections, such as race tracks, so its impact is limited. Similarly, the California law slips through the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by confining itself to in-state agriculture (though I'm sure the food is sold in other states--so a questionable bill at best).

The Governator has three times vetoed similar measures, and hopefully he will this time too.

In the meantime, catch a load of this surreal debate:

"How many summers do we have to go through of heat-related deaths? How many farm-related accidents...before we recognize that unions are most important for people who are the most vulnerable?" said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said his bill would prevent farm owners and labor contractors from intimidating workers before secret-ballot elections. But farm and business groups say the legislation could let the United Farm Workers pressure employees into signing the union cards.

Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, questioned whether workers are any safer with union representation.

"I was unaware of the fact that under union contracts we have less heat-related deaths. Do you have statistics to back that up?" Denham said.

Steinberg did not produce statistics but said he was unaware of any unionized farmworkers dying from a heat-related ailment.

Hostage-Taking Trumps Card Check Anyday

As is their wont, the French reject American culture while embracing and perfecting it, in their own inimitable way.

Take the example of unionization. France is widely unionized. You can hardly visit there without the garbage collectors or air traffic controllers or railway operators going on strike for this or that. They all work for publicly operated entities, which are in turn union strangled, oops, I mean controlled. Anyway, a one- or two-day strike makes for a nice little holiday, n'est-ce pas?

Here in the United States, we argue over card check and whether that should be allowed as the preferred option for union organizing.

In France, they don't argue--they take hostages.

The latest example comes from the Molex Inc. plant in Villemur-sur-Tam. Owners are threatening to close the plant and have been negotiating with the union, but the union smells a rat, sensing that Molex wants to shift operations to China.

Hence the logical thing to do is take two executives hostage until the company agrees to leave the equipment and workers all in place.

So far, this sounds like a Gallic version of the Republic Windows and Doors stand-off in Chicago of late last year. There, employees staged a sit-down until they got their severance packages.

In France, we'll just have to wait to see what happens.

Hostages are, however, treated civilly during these stand-offs. Last month, an executive held hostage at 3M was even treated to moules et frites (mussels and fries, a traditional dish) as a snack.

Like I said before, why check cards when you can just hold some hostages until you get what you want?

"Sign here to recognize our union, or we'll keep you hostage until you do" works faster than gathering all those signatures.

H.R. 1355 Replicates EFCA Without Card Check

Introduced in the House of Representatives on March 5, the National Labor Relations Modernization Act (H.R. 1355) is like EFCA's little sister.

The main difference is that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) allows for instant unionization when a majority of employees sign a card--the infamous card check provision. What the Modernization Act calls for instead are elections within 30 days of 30 percent of the employees' having signed cards (can't get rid of those cards, huh?), which vastly speeds up the system now in place.

The House bill, introduced by Pennsylvania's Representative Joe Sestak, like EFCA mandates mediation on contract negotiations (if the union wins the election), but only after 120 days, not 90, and it then allows another 120 days to reach agreement on a contract, not the 30 under EFCA. Then if there is still no agreement, an arbitrator can dictate a contract that would prevail for 18 months, which is six months shorter than EFCA's provision.

Like EFCA, the Modernization Act stiffens penalties on employers for interfering in the election process or retaliating against employee organizers and advocates. It also gives the union equal access to employees prior to the election so the employees cannot be "brainwashed" by their employers.

The bill looks to stand little chance. It's languishing in the House Education and Labor Committee with no co-sponsors, but something like this may eventually see the light of law if Senators keep backing off EFCA.

Score: Card Check 0, Wal-Mart 1

Now, here's one for all of you who love the idea of card-check unionization as embodied in the nascent Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), using card check, organized a Wal-Mart store just outside Montreal, Canada, in 2005. And, of course, it began collecting union dues (the sine qua non of labor and politics, the almighty buck).

The UFCW spent the next three-plus years trying to negotiate a contract, and this was in the heart of union-loving, union-friendly Canada, with Wal-Mart balking the whole time.

The issue, a la EFCA, went to arbitration, and the arbitrator this week issued his finding.

Guess what?

Wal-Mart won big time. Arbitrator (remember, this is unionville) Alain Corriveau ruled that the UFCW demands would destroy Wal-Mart's business model, which he said treated employees as well or better, wage- and benefits-wise, as competing retailers.

Wal-Mart’s compensation system, said the arbitrator, "must be retained," and "falls within the culture of the company which encourages and privileges performance at work." He added: "Putting into place...a wage scale as proposed by the union would also drastically change an important piece of [Wal-Mart’s] business model."

He did grant a 30-cent wage increase over the next two years to current employees at the Saint-Hyacinthe Wal-Mart so they wouldn't be "impoverished" by union dues. New hires will not get the raise, however. (Read more details here.)

Question: Are the employees now going to card check the UFCW out of their store?

Answer: If they're smart, they will.

Dem Defection Seems to Doom EFCA

Losing their lone Republican supporter in Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Democrats pushing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in the Senate faced what best could be called an uphill battle.

With the announcement yesterday by Democratic Senator Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas that she "cannot support that bill," however, things are now trending decidedly downhill.

Without modifications, EFCA may be finished in the 111th Congress unless the Dems resort to the reconiliation process to bypass a cloture vote, which requires 60 Senators to move a bill along. However, reconciliation would set up several nuclear explosions politically and would have a hard time surviving the Byrd Rule, which states that reconciliation must be used only for budget matters (although they're already hinting about enclosing health care reform in reconciliation).

Other than modifying the EFCA or passing just parts of it, supporters may have to wait until 2010 when there will be more Republican than Democratic Senate seats up for reelection. The Democrats might well end up with a filibuster-proof Senate, or they may get spanked as they did after two years of Bill and Hillary in 1994.

Time will tell.

EFCA: Canada Rejects It, We Embrace It

It's funny--and illustrative--that Democrats in the U.S. have always ached for the liberalism of our northern neighbor, which is one reason why I've been warning on these pages that health care reform, Demo-style, is nothing but a Trojan Horse for socialized medicine a la Canada.

However, on one crucial issue, our U.S. liberals are not watching northern affairs closely enough. Canada once had card-check union authorization on the books in all ten of its provinces. After disastrous results, the law has been rescinded in six provinces, including Saskatchewan, birthplace of and home to Canada's communist party, and the most liberal province of all.

Jason Clemens explains this more fully in his article on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Meanwhile, the EFCA, as estimated by the Heritage Foundation, could end up unionizing more than 4 million small businesses since the exemption for small businesses has not been increased since 1959 and stands at gross receipts of $50,000 a year. There are very few small businesses today that could survive on that meager amount of revenue.

The AFL-CIO's Stewart Acuff denies unions will be targeting small businesses, but what's to stop any group of employees from unionizing once they see how easy it is?

China: Laboratory for EFCA-Style Unionization

Can't blame 'em. Business owners in China's manufacturing belt, their businesses up in smoke in the worldwide recession, are fleeing the country and leaving their workers high and dry--and yuan-less--rather than cope with China's restrictive labor laws.

Of course, you can also call them rats for absconding with their companies' loot while leaving their workforce with no money to survive on. China's recent Labor Contract Law supposedly protects workers from unannounced factory closings and loss of pay, but many owners have been doing an end run and disappearing.

To date, some 20 million migrant workers, who relocate from the provinces to work in factory-rich Guangdong Province and send money home to their families, are now unemployed.

Since all workers are unionized in China (but have no right to strike), the national union is fighting back, and so is the government.

"We will use all labor-related laws to help migrant workers keep their jobs in this difficult time," Zhang Mingqi, vice-chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions said at the start of the National People's Congress (NPC) session.

Some owners were also hopeful that the government would not enforce the Labor Contract Law and other provisions, but that's not going to happen, evidently.

Xin Chunying, the deputy director of the legislative affairs commission of the NPC Standing Committee, said the Labor Contract Law will not be amended because of the current global economic downturn.

"The crisis has nothing to do with the law. We won't amend the law because of the downturn," she told a press conference of the ongoing NPC session Monday.

Anyway, all this looks eerily like what will happen in the United States if the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA--see yesterday's posting) passes. In a word, chaos. In two words, disappearing companies.

Personnel Concepts' White Paper Predicts Future

Well, not quite, but Personnel Concepts--the labor law poster pioneers--has added a white papers section to its home page, and one of the featured papers looks at labor law changes coming under Barack Obama.

Prominent among the anticipated pieces of legislation is something called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has christened "Armageddon"--the end of free enterprise in America.

EFCA, also derisively called "card check" because it enables employees to unionize simply by signing unionization cards and shunning any secret ballots, looked to be a shoe-in at the start of the Obama administration, but recently speculation has surfaced that some previous supporters are having second thoughts.

The bill is reportedly going to be introduced in the House of Representatives today. Passage in the House, which is wildly stacked in favor of the Democrats, is almost a sure thing, but the Senate--with its 60-vote cloture rule--is more iffy, and that's where the reported defections have taken place.

We'll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, I'm sure Personnel Concepts will keep us posted.

Unions, Smunions--What, Me Worry?

For all the celestial disturbance over the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), you wouldn't know it from a poll I just discovered at the Manpower Employment Blawg.

The blog posted this question:

What is the #1 most frightening employment law issue you’re facing right now?

And got these results:

1. Terminations (26%)
2. Discrimination (13%)
3. Medical issues (10%)
4. Harassment (9%)
5. (Tie) Wage and hour (8%) and Benefits (8%)
7. Hiring (7%)
8. RIFs (6%)
9. Unions (3%)

So, unions are at the bottom of the list, are they? That being the case (in a very unscientific survey), why all the hubbub over EFCA?

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.