The “Employee Free Choice Act” of 2009 has been introduced in both the House and the Senate .  Mr. Obama has stated that if it reaches his desk, he will sign it.

Pure and Simple, this is the quid pro quo for Big Union’s support of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party in their efforts in the November, 2008 election.

Today’s Big Unions are largely irrelevant.  Their reason for existence, for the most part, went away with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.  From a peak of over 25% of US employees being Union members in the mid-1950s, Union membership has declined to around 11% today.  And, today, a big percentage of Union membership is government or “public employees” unionization.

As is often the case with Congressional Bills, the name given the Bill is likely to tell you more about what the Bill restricts than what it promotes.  Take, for example, the recently passed “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.”  This Act restricts economic recovery by placing a huge burden on business activity.  I refer to the burden of the future effect of spending very large amounts of taxpayer money that has not yet been collected.  The Act is a restriction to Reinvestment in that it takes from the investments of the tax payers by depressing the value of their assets and it  restricts the reinvestment to only those programs which government sees fit to fund.

The Employee Free Choice Act is being pushed by Big Labor to tilt the playing field further in their favor when it comes to determining for whom an employee works.  Here are some major features of the Bill:

It would allow the Certification of a Union as the sole bargaining unit for employees of a company without giving employees the benefit of a vote in a secret ballot.  If the Union can collect signed cards showing interest in a union from 50+% of the employees they will be automatically certified.  Currently, the Union is required cards from 30% showing interest and then a secret ballot vote is conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.  Imagine to what ends a Union might go to coerce a signature on a card.  I have some experience in this and know, not just from anecdotal evidence, that threats and bullying just scratch the surface of the abuses.  At least with a secret ballot no employee’s vote is known (unless all vote one way).  With “card check” certification, the names of all employes who signed are known.  Therefore, those who have not signed are known as well.  Is this the best way to get a fair result?

The Act would impose strict fines and penalties on Employers who attempt to intimidate employees but imposes no similar fines or penalties on Union organizers for the same abuses.  If an employer threatens an employee with firing if he votes for a Union, he can be fined $20,000 plus jail time.  That is probably a good incentive for an employer not to abuse an employee in that way.  The Bill does not, however, have provisions for a Union organizer who threatens an employee with blacklisting or even violence if he does not sign a card.  If someone is walking home from work and is approached by a couple of sizable men who suggest that he sign a card or he won’t be able to walk home again, do you think the card might be signed?

I find it hard to believe that so many legislators are backing this bill.  I guess they feel they owe the Unions (and many do) and that most of us won’t notice (who is paying attention to this other than threatened employers?) that this bill is one sided and takes the fundamental freedom of secret ballot from the people the Unions pretend to help.  I often wonder what would have been the effect if the reported $61,000,000 invested by big Unions in the Obama campaign had been spent on programs to improve the lot of Union Members.  Think of the benefit to members if the Unions spent that much money to help train members to gain skills in new areas of industry.

If Mr. Obama and his Congress are serious about economic recovery, and I don’t believe they are, the last thing they would do is impose unions on the remaining viable businesses.  At least Nero just fiddled while Rome burned.  It appears Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden, and their flock want to throw fire on the flames.  According to a Rasmussen Poll taken earlier this week, only 23% of Americans believe the Federal Government represents the will of the people.  Is this an example of Why the vast majority of Americans feel this way?

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