The Employee Free Choice Act - aka Card Check

The Employee Freedom Of Choice Act, aka the 'Card Check' bill, will soon be introduced again in Congress as Democrats push to pass this very controversial piece of legislation.

Dems to introduce controversial card check bill ‘soon’
By Kevin Bogardus
Posted: 02/04/09 06:22 PM [ET]

In what will be the first step of a fierce battle waged on Capitol Hill, House Democrats are poised to introduce a controversial bill that is organized labor’s top legislative priority.

Asked on Wednesday when he plans to introduce his Employee Free Choice Act, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) said, “Soon.” Miller added the so-called card check bill would be unveiled in a matter of days or weeks.
thehill.com...

What is Card Check?

The US Chamber of Commerce puts it succinctly:

Under the existing law today, workers have a chance to vote for or against unionization in a private-ballot election that is federally supervised. Under Card Check, if more than 50% of workers at a facility sign a card, the government would have to certify the union, and a private ballot election would be prohibited--even if workers want one.

By forcing workers to sign a card in public--instead of vote in private--Card Check opens the door to intimidation and coercion. Over 70% of voters agree that a private election is better than card check.

www.uschamber.com...

So, in effect, workers are asked to sign a card in public, stating that they support unionizing their workplace. This eliminates the current secret ballot method.

This is nothing more than intimidation, imo. There is nothing wrong with secret ballots that warrants this type of bill.

I'm all for voluntary unionization, but I'm ever more in favor of secret ballots.

Why do the Dems back this? Because of the *huge* campaign donations made by the unions.

I don't see a point in this legislation. I don't really see a point in Unions either. But if you want to form one that is fine, because your exercising your freedom to do so.

This is just leading to the unionization of America and dragging us down to a third world country.

I'm in agreement with you, this is only to allow the Unions to force businesses to unionize. And believe me it won' be small new unions forming it will be the big unions taking over everything.

My vote is:

In close votes i see a lot of fraud with this.

I was in one plant where we had different units doing different jobs.
the electricians were already union and maintenance unit wanted to go union. But the production unit would not have anything to do with the union the maintenance unit wanted.

The maintenance people wanted the teamsters.
Most of the production people were ex west coast longshoremen union(ILWU) that the maintenance people had gotten voted out years before and we wanted back.

The electricians backed the production people in not wanting the teamsters running the plant.

Under the card system the teamsters would have been in and the production people would have walked and shut the plant down rather then allow the teamsters represent them.

As it was there were fraudulent cards with names of production workers turned in by the teamsters trying to get it to a vote.

We had union card signed by all the production unit for the ILWU and were ready to turn them in if we had to to block the teamsters.


[edit on 1-3-2009 by ANNED]