Good work, Daren.
Big Labor is lying about this bill, just as union organizers have been known to lie to workers about the significance of the cards they’re asked (or pressured) to sign. Where the card check tactics have been used (that is, in organizing campaigns where the company has been intimidated into signing a “neutrality agreement” which means that it gives up the right to call for an election), there is abundant evidence of harassment and deception being used to get people to sign.
I’m no fan of the National Labor Relations Act (in my view an unconstitutional law that infringes upon the rights of workers and companies both), but at least with an election supervised by the NLRB, the workers get time to hear what the union claims it can do for them, but also counter-arguments by the company and perhaps even by workers who have had bad experiences with unions in the past. Apropos of that point, we have to keep in mind that every year there are numerous union decertification elections in which many workers express their dissatisfaction with “their” union. There are plenty of American workers who regard unions as corrupt, too costly, too political, etc. Under the “card check” procedure, there is no assurance that dissenting voices will have any opportunity to be heard.
That’s hardly consistent with the First Amendment values of open debate on matters of legal and political importance, which is one reason why constitutional scholar Richard Epstein has argued that EFCA is unconstitutional.
It speaks very poorly of the moral character of Obama and all the other politicians eager to pass this hideous piece of special interest legislation that they’d sanction a unionizing tactic that tramples on speech and elevates harassment and deception.
