Posted on 12/03/2008 9:19:21 AM PST by Fred
Organized labor helped elect Barack Obama and now eagerly awaits his promised support for its top priority—a bill that would make it easier to set up union locals.
The Employee Free Choice Act would allow unions to create local bargaining units without winning the vote of a majority of workers in a secret ballot.
The local unit would be certified if a majority of workers endorsed it by signing an authorization card handed out by union organizers.
Fair enough? Not really. The so-called card-check bill would not protect workers and it would not be "free choice." It would strip away their right to vote in secret, making it more likely they would face intimidation from organizers and other workers. The pressure would be on to check the card, whether or not they actually wanted a union.
Once the union was certified by a card check, the employer would have to accept arbitration if a contract couldn't be negotiated within 120 days.
It's clear why union bosses want this law. Union membership ticked up last year, but it has been plunging for half a century. In the 1950s, about one-third of U.S. workers belonged to a union. Now just 12.1 percent of U.S. workers—and just 7.5 percent of private-sector workers—are in a union.
There are many reasons for that decline, including the growth of the service sector economy, the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas—and the choice of workers who believe that a union would require them to pay dues but wouldn't benefit them.
Union leaders prefer to blame the decline on federal labor laws, which they say make it too hard to organize. That's a pretty flimsy argument. Present law allows the National Labor Relations Board to call for an election by secret ballot after 30 percent
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I blame the decline on my personal experience with Union thugs when I was much younger - an experience that would have been a felony on their part if unions didn't have so much political power. I would never ever vote for a union no matter what, nor would I stay with a job if those thugs took over. Those real life experiences by people just like me are why unions are having trouble attracting new members.
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