Free Republic

If we don’t finally kill Card Check it will kill us. So far we’ve beaten this monster but union gangsters and their Democrat comrades want our liberties and they won’t stop. Their repulsive plan would rob America’s workers of first our secret ballot rights, then our money in unnecessary union dues and finally our jobs themselves. Unions kill jobs. There is no disputing that. Nevertheless the AFL-CIO’s greedy hogs won’t quit. They are desperate trapped animals that can see their fall from power clearly in front of them. They know that unless they get a transfusion of cash they’re done...

...[T]he AFL-CIO removed the large banner supporting EFCA which had covered the corner of the building facing the White House for the past year or so...

Despite all our talk of CommieObamie being a socialist, it is a straight out fact that the far left in America are mad that Obama didn't turn us into the U.S.S.R. lite the second he took office. His pace at selling us out and turning us into a social democratic system ala France isn't happening fast enough for them. For unions the fact that Obama hasn't summarily castrated the business community and forced card check down everyone's throats yet is a downer. And with that in mind, unions have announced that they are taking their ire out on those mythical...

Over at the Washington Examiner, Mark Hemingway highlights a case which shows just how the Employee Free Choice Act might work in practice if it were ever enacted. The act would make union organizing radically easier by replacing federally monitored elections with alternate methods, such as the following: One day last fall, approximately 40,000 private day care owners in Michigan woke up to discover they had become members of a public sector union. Most had no idea what was coming. Here’s how it happened: The United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees worked with...

Unions: Republican senators have warned the president not to appoint Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board while Congress is in recess. But he will — and American workers and consumers will be worse off for it. There's good reason to oppose Becker sitting on the NLRB, the five-member federal agency that administers the National Labor Relations Act governing relations between unions and private-sector employers. It's not so much because Becker is a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union and would be the first NLRB member to come straight from the legal staff of organized...

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As reported exclusively on these pages last week, Union pension plans are in much worse shape than people feared. In fact, Moody’s September 2009 report measured 133 union pension plans. Out of the total 133 only 25 union pension plans are adequately funded, 43 of them are between 65-79% funded that classifies them as endangered. The remaining 65 union pension plans, one out of every two measured, are underfunded at a critical rate, less than 65%. For the full list click here. The proposed card check bill, which will allow unions to dramatically increase their rolls by eliminating the secret...

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., will vote for cloture on card check if the pro-union legislation comes up for a vote, he told businessmen Tuesday. Specter’s vote alone is not likely to ensure passage of the bill, formally known as the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make union organizing radically easier. Democrats lack a 60-vote majority in the Senate, it has no Republican support and other Democrats are likely to oppose it. But Big Labor probably needed Specter to even have a chance. Specter may be feeling political heat.

The Associated Press posted a story lamenting that Big Labor has failed so far to get Obama to heel by their commands. Big Labor has said "jump" and Obama has but skipped. The article is correct, though, that Big Labor has failed in its two biggest goals: socialist healthcare and card check. At least, they've failed so far. A third failure has also been forced upon Big Labor. As a result of newly seated Republican Senator Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts, Big Labor was not able to install Craig Becker as the head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)......

Explosion In The 6th Congressional District: Could The Implausible Occur? Is State Rep. Curt Schroder A Dark Horse For The Endorsement? BY CHRIS FREIND “FREINDLY FIRE” Hollywood couldn’t have scripted the drama any better in the GOP’s nomination race for Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District. Try to follow along: Four-term incumbent Jim Gerlach tells the world --- repeatedly --- that he would NOT seek re-election, opting instead to jump into the gubernatorial fray. Based on Gerlach’s word, popular Chester County State Representative Curt Schroder announces he would seek the GOP nomination for the open seat, raising nearly $200,000 in just a...

Barack Obama dropped by the White House press room the other day to stick it to the Republicans in the name of comity and fellowship. He offered to cooperate with the Republicans in the Mafia spirit of making an "offer you can't refuse." "I'm willing to move off some of the preferences of my party in order to meet them halfway," he told the reporters, "but there's got to be some give from their side as well. I also won't hesitate to condemn what I consider obstinacy." The only way Republicans can demonstrate their lack of obstinacy, the president made...

Gov. Christie today declared that New Jersey had veered to the edge of bankruptcy and ordered a broad array of state cuts in an effort to make up a $2.2 billion deficit in the current budget amid falling revenues. Christie froze aid to more than 500 school districts and public colleges and universities, ordered the end to several state programs and the Office of Public Advocate, and seized unspent money across state government. "Today, we come to terms with the fact that we cannot spend money on everything we want,'' Christie told a special joint session of the legislature. "The...

Republicans are up in arms over a pro-union contracting policy currently under consideration by the White House, arguing the measures will significantly increase the cost of government contracts and are part of the Obama administration’s efforts to implement policies that favor organized labor while circumventing Congress. The Daily Caller reported last week that senior administration officials are considering a series of proposals known as “High Road Contracting Policy” that would give preference to companies bidding on federal contracts that pay hourly workers a “living wage” (typically a mandated, above-market wage) and provide additional benefits above and beyond existing labor laws....

Labor Policy: And you thought card check legislation was dead? That certainly appeared to be the case last spring. But now there's talk of attaching it to a jobs bill. Dirty politics and lousy policy. Card check, known last year as the Employee Free Choice Act, is an attempt to fundamentally change the way unions organize. Under a card check law, a union would be certified if a simple majority of workers signed the cards that were used to gauge their interest in unionization. A follow-up vote through a secret ballot, the traditional method of certifying a union, would not...

Major Garrett tweets this response from AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka on the defeat of Craig Becker: "A Republican-led filibuster has put political interests over the needs of America’s working families," Trumka said. "We support President Obama’s expressed willingness to make recess appointments of critical posts in the federal government if that’s what it takes to get around minority delay and obstruction."

Fox News now reporting that Pres. Obama;s nomination of leftist radical labor union associated Craig Becker has failed in the US senate.

Still looming on the legislative horizon is something deceptively called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, H.R. 800), the provisions of which will make it easier for union organizers to impose union representation on a group of workers by circumventing the current secret ballot method of deciding for or against union representation with an odious mechanism called “card check.” Secret ballot voting has been a feature in US elections for more than two centuries, and that includes union elections. However, if the EFCA were to become law, the federal government will have tilted the playing field toward labor unions by...

Since the election of our first ex-community organizer as President, organizing for progressive change has declined. The reasons range from sharply reduced funding for organizers, to complacency after Democrats’ sweeping 2008 victories, to labor unions being forced to focus on protecting current workers from contract givebacks rather than organizing new members. The net result is that grassroots organizing – which prioritizes face-to-face contacts with the unconverted, empowers people rather than simply asking them to fulfill a task, and builds local coalitions for pressure campaigns targeting politicians – is being replaced by less effective e-mail mobilizations and other short-cuts. As the...

Earlier this week, I noted that Democrats were frantically trying do some special favors for labor unions before Scott Brown was seated and Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. They succeeded in getting Patricia Smith, the Obama administration's nominee for Solicitor of Labor, through a party-line cloture vote, even though it's entirely likely she lied in her Senate testimony about a program she was involved in as New York's labor commissioner that unjustly benefited unions. However, with Scott Brown being seated today and Democrats losing their supermajority, Big Labor may well have just seen their secret weapon shot down....

Yesterday, Senate Democrats rushed through a party-line cloture vote on Obama's nominee for Solicitor General, Patricia Smith. Smith got 60 Democratic votes even though a Republican senator produced damning evidence that she lied in Senate testimony regarding her role in a controversial program that unfairly benefited labor unions while she was New York State Labor Commissioner. Today, the Senate is again trying to perform as many favors for Big Labor as it can before newly elected Republican Senator Scott Brown is seated and Democrats lose their supermajority. Senate Democrats are now trying to rush through the nomination of Craig Becker...