Martha's Blog

Is Card Check Back from the Dead?

This week in Orlando, FL, union leaders are meeting to regroup after a year filled with disappointment from their allies in the Democratic Party.  A year after celebrating a new occupant in the Oval Office who would be sympathetic to their agenda, they’ve seen card check legislation – their pet issue -- pushed to the backburner, while pro-labor nominees to the National Labor Relations Board have been blocked.

Not to worry, though.  Big labor still has plenty of friends in Washington to take care of them.  After all, the unions spent plenty of money to put them in power.  In fact, when the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate decided to hold a behind-closed-doors conference committee (to which no Republican was invited), the labor unions were brought into the negotiations. 

Now, here comes Vice President Joe Biden, ready to promise even more to the unions.  In his recent remarks to the AFL-CIO, Biden promised to help appoint pro-union members to vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board.  When speaking about the Employee Free Choice Act (better known as card check), he said, “I think we’re going to get it done.”

Let’s revisit what the Card Check legislation seeks to do.  In workplaces where a group of workers wish to organize or affiliate with a larger labor union, the work force as a whole must vote, and a positive vote from a simple majority of workers is required in order for the employees to unionize.  Currently, that vote is done by secret ballot, but the Card Check bill seeks to make each worker’s vote a public matter.  The passage of this legislation would allow for workers who voted against organizing to be singled out and intimidated, threatened, and bullied by organizers and other pro-union workers.  Like many of the Democrats’ other proposals, this bill seeks to give control of our choices over to someone else—in this instance, a labor union. 

In addition to essentially legalizing worker intimidation by union organizers and pro-union employees, this bill would also kill jobs by enforcing binding arbitration on employers—allowing a government bureaucrat to make decisions rather allowing employers to decide how their companies should be run.  If this bad legislation passes, don’t be surprised when hundreds of small businesses in our communities close, leaving thousands of workers unemployed.

While it may seem like Card Check has fallen off the radar and won’t see the light of day, we must never underestimate the Obama/Pelosi leadership’s willingness to ram legislation through to satisfy their political patrons, at the expense of the American people (see health care). The only way we can ensure Card Check and other job-killing policies will be stopped is to elect more conservative leaders to Congress. You can count on me to fight tooth and nail against Card Check and other anti-jobs policies.