I’ve written about the Employee Free Choice Act and card check several times, both here and at Townhall. Jay Tea has written about it as well. I’d be willing to bet that if you ask the first twenty people you talk to today (unless you work in Washington DC) you will be lucky to find one person who knows anything about the issue. That is pretty amazing, really. If the positions were reversed and we were looking at conservatives regaining a level of control they had not had in half a century, I am willing to bet there would be scores of reports in the media about the possible horrors to come (including, of course, the overturning of Roe v. Wade), With a filibuster-proof Democrat majority Senate a real possibility, the issue of card check is getting more and more attention, though mostly in the conservative and new media. The Wall Street Journal has a piece today about some of the things total liberal control of the government would likely bring with it, including card check:
If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.
Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.
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– Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is “card check.” Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The “Employee Free Choice Act” would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.
The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union “contract” after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.
