Joe Calomino, State Director, Americans for Prosperity-Illinois

Labor Unions prepare to strip our right to privacy…

On January 20, as President Obama turned to the masses to deliver his inaugural address, at the same time the pent up demands of the liberal left, that leads most of organized labor, were unleashed on America’s employees.

The “Employer Free Choice Act” (EFCA) is only the first issue of what promises to be a parade of very damaging proposals to change the balance between employer and employee.

The “Employee Free Choice Act” would amend the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) to make it possible for workers to organize unions by signing cards designating representation, rather than by using the existing system of voting by secret ballot to recognize unions.

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By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor, CNSNews.com

(CNSNews.com) – A former Clinton-era Cabinet member is taking part in a union-backed media offensive that is pushing for increased unionization by having Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

It’s an argument, however, that some economists say comes straight out of the failed policies of the past – the 1930s Depression era, to be exact.

Robert Reich, Clinton’s secretary of labor, told reporters Wednesday that the way to get the economy back on track is to boost the purchasing power of the middle class. One major way to do that, he said, is to “expand the percentage of working Americans in unions.”

“Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States,” the former Harvard-turned-Berkeley public policy professor said.

“With median wages rising slowly or actually dropping, consumers simply don’t have enough money to buy all the goods and services that the economy provides,” Reich said.

“If they can’t borrow any more and have to rely on their sinking wages, the entire economy is in trouble, because there’s just simply not enough demand out there,” he added.

But if workers did have unions, Reich theorized, they would have a wage and benefit premium.

“If they did have higher wages and benefits, they would have purchasing power they need to buy more of the goods and services that this economy produces. That would strengthen the economy overall,” he said.

Reich is working hand-in-hand with a coalition of labor unions and the Center for American Progress Action Fund to call for increased unionization as a means of “saving the economy.”

As part of that, Reich endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the “Card Check” bill, which would allow union organizers to get employees of a company to create a union simply by signing union cards — in lieu of workplace secret-ballot elections.

Barbara Comstock of the Workforce Fairness Institute, meanwhile, isn’t buying Reich’s analysis.

“By his logic, Michigan — the most unionized state in the country — would be the most prosperous state in the country and the auto industry would be the economic model that the rest of the country should follow,” Comstock told CNSNews.com.

Read the rest at:CNSNews.com

Greg Sargent is reporting that a coalition of conservative Democrats, the so-called “Blue Dogs,” have joined to ask Speaker Pelosi not to bring the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to the floor.

The Blue Dogs have asked Pelosi not to consider the bill until the Senate has first voted on it. As far as the Senate goes, Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he won’t bring it up for vote unless he knows he has 60 votes and that number doesn’t seem very likely at this time.

Moderate Democrats from more conservative districts are afraid that if the House takes up the bill first, two divergent versions of the bill will exist between the House and the Senate and that this confusion will give opponents of the EFCA enough ammo to hurt the reelection chances of the moderates.

“Their concern is that the House will pass something, then the Senate will take up the bill and do something different,” the senior leadership aide tells me. “The Blue Dogs don’t want to end up voting on something that won’t even become law. They’re saying, `See what can get through the Senate first, and then we’ll vote on it.’”

House Dem leaders agree with this assessment, the aide says. Asked if it would anger labor leaders, the aide said that labor might not like it but that labor leaders would “understand the dynamic.”

In any case, if Pelosi heeds this warning from moderate Democrats, we may see the EFCA stymied for a while unable to go forward. Opponents of this bill need to keep the pressure up on Democrat representatives in right to work states. It is obviously having an effect so far.

Obama wants a new Wagner Act

By MARK MIX, Wall Street Journal

By the mid-1930s, the U.S. economy appeared to be climbing out of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), which had bottomed out at 41 in 1932, was advancing. It increased 73% from the beginning of 1935 through the end of 1936, when it hit 180. The number of unemployed, 13 million in 1933, dropped to 9.5 million in 1935 and 7.6 million in 1936.

Then, in 1937, the DJIA plunged 33% in what is often called “a depression within a depression.” Joblessness skyrocketed.

A principal factor in the meltdown that year was the U.S. Supreme Court’s surprise 5-4 decision in early April to uphold the constitutionality of the Wagner Act, which had passed two years earlier. This measure, which is still the basis of our labor relations regime, authorized union officials to seek and obtain the power to act as the “exclusive” (that is, the monopoly) bargaining agent over all the front-line employees, including union nonmembers as well as members, in a unionized workplace.

As Amity Shlaes observed in her recent history of the Great Depression, “The Forgotten Man,” within a few months after the Wagner Act was upheld, industrial production began to plummet and “the jobs started to disappear, with unemployment moving back to 1931 levels,” even as the number of workers under union control was “growing astoundingly.”

Given the reality of unions in the workplace, the law meant that efficiency and profitability were compromised, by forcing employers to equally reward their most productive and least productive employees. Therefore subsequent wage increases for some workers led to widespread job losses.

Pre-Depression-era growth and prosperity did not return to the private sector until the early 1950s, when the spread of state right-to-work laws prohibiting forced union membership and dues greatly reduced the detrimental effects of the Wagner Act.

The U.S. has just experienced another stock market crash, and Barack Obama, the candidate now favored to be the next president, is in favor of what amounts to a new Wagner Act.

If the mislabeled “Employee Free Choice Act,” becomes law, it will likely have a similar effect on the economy as the original Wagner Act, transforming what could have been a recovery into a lengthy, deep recession, or worse.

The bill would greatly facilitate organization in workplaces by effectively eliminating secret ballot elections, allowing unions to become exclusive bargaining agents when a majority of the workers sign a card indicating they want a union — before they’ve heard a word from their employer about the potential downside of unionization.

The cards themselves may be signed under duress. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) czar Andy Stern predicts that its enactment would cause unions to “grow by 1.5 million members a year, not just for five years but for 10 to 15 straight years.”

Sen. Obama voted for one version of the card-check bill in June 2007 and pledged to Big Labor that he will push for enactment as president. With a handful of pickups he will have a filibuster-proof majority in the next Senate, and can make good his pledge.

“I owe those unions,” Mr. Obama explained in his 2006 political memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.” “When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way . . .”

John McCain voted against card-check legislation in 2007, and has pledged to veto such legislation as president. He also supports a national right-to-work law that would repeal all current federal labor law provisions authorizing forced union dues and fees. Unfortunately, his campaign has done little to alert the nation to the dangers of the card-check bill.

Before they cast their votes, the American people ought to be aware of Mr. Obama’s commitment to the passage of a new Wagner Act, and of what the economic consequences of such a law are almost certain to be.

Mr. Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.

Here is an interesting story from Mississippi:

NFIB wants lawmakers to kill Act

JACKSON — Mississippi state legislators are considering two resolutions supporting small business and opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, according to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

“Secret ballots are a sacred part of our democracy,” said Ron Aldridge, state director of the NFIB. “If the unions and their friends in Congress get their way, it’ll be like going to the polls on Election Day and having someone stand over your shoulder and watch you vote.”

The NFIB reports that the state Senate has passed Senate Concurrent Resolution 550, urging Congress to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act. In the state House of Representatives, House Concurrent Resolution 25 has been approved with an amendment calling for an end to “denying workers a secure secret ballot vote in all union representation elections.”

Under the federal legislation, unions would no longer have to give employees the chance to cast secret ballots on the question of whether to organize their workplace. Instead, the unions would be required only to persuade a majority of employees to sign union authorization cards, a process also known as card check, the NFIB said.

“People should be free to vote their conscience,” Aldridge said. “There’s no free choice under the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s the ‘Employee Forced Choice Act.’”