Last month I wrote about card check, an issue that has not gotten a lot of attention this election season. Although not an issue on the radar of most voters, the ramifications, especially for Republicans, could be significant. Today I was emailed a link to this video and to the website Save the Election, which are calling attention to the issue. Here is an excerpt from the column I wrote last month:
Under the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act, if a majority of employees have signed union cards, employers would no longer be able to demand a secret ballot election. Oregonians for Employee Freedom says unions “prefer card check because it means they know exactly how people are going to vote. For anyone who doesn’t agree with joining the union, they are more open to threats, intimidation and undue pressure by other co-workers, union organizers and even their supervisors. Workers can even be visited in their homes by union organizers so that the organizers can “persuade” workers that a union is the right thing to do in their workplace.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) “plans to spend some $150 million in this year’s election, most of it to get Barack Obama and other Democrats elected.” Earlier this year, blogger Todd Beeton quoted a speech by Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU Anna Burger in which she said the key reason the EFCA is so important to SEIU is that “it is the fuel — the opening — for SEIU to change our growth curve from 100,000 to a million or more workers a year.” Beeton said “that in itself, Burger argues, makes the Employee Free Choice Act larger than any one single issue, even more important than healthcare.” So not only would the act result in a loss of privacy for employees and greater power for union bosses in the workplace, but it would also serve as a way for those on the left to grow the source of labor’s funding which overwhelmingly goes to support Democrats for election.
Ed Morrisey wrote, “Card Check would make it easy for union organizers to intimidate workers into voting for the union by eliminating the secret ballot, and then the SEIU and other unions could force more cash from workers into the pockets of Democrats…Now the SEIU suddenly has $150 million, from which they’ve already committed at least $85 million specific to Democratic candidates. That money got squeezed out of the locals under duress, in obvious violation of the spirit and letter of federal law. The union knows how to protect itself and its interests, and the lockstep nature of their support for Democrats should awaken voters to the threat their policies comprise. This is nothing more than a closed-feedback loop for Democrats, and Card Check is the prize that will ensure its rapid growth.”
