From the diaries, by Erick.

Much to the pleasure of the organized labor movement, Sen. Tom Harkin, as the Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, stands to offer a tremendous amount of help to Big Labor. By pledging to pass a misleadingly-named and detrimental bill called the Employee Free Choice Act, Sen. Harkin is revealing his true loyalties – and his inconsistent rhetoric.

With union pension plans grossly underfunded, EFCA presents a number of threats to workers and businesses, and a number of benefits for union bosses. In their quest for more political spending power, union bosses have been feverishly pushing for the swift passage of EFCA and the question arises as to what Sen. Harkin has been saying about the bill. The answer is quite egregious.

In July of this year the Senator assured the public that Democrats were “not doing anything” about EFCA due to other priorities on the docket such as healthcare. But on September 9, he told a group of pro-union activists that in July he had the 60 votes needed for EFCA to pass, and then proceeded to audaciously blame the lack of a vote on the recently late Senator Edward Kennedy. On October 22, Harkin admitted to a news source that Democrats are “very close to having an agreement” on the bill, though he didn’t go into details.

Read More →

The U.S. Department of Labor web site acknowledges that Labor Day originated as

a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Now there’s no harm in honoring those who labor - hard-working Americans are the backbone of the greatest free-market economy in the world…and we hope it stays that way, Obama’s socialism fetish notwithstanding.

But on this Labor Day weekend, isn’t it interesting that Gallup has just published the results of a poll showing that for the first time since the mid-1930s, less than 50% of Americans approve of labor unions?

Read More →

Tomorrow, Pittsburgh is going to be home to thousands of political activists from both sides of the aisle. (Although if you watch cable news you would think it was only the left.) Netroots Nation and RightOnline are both in town for their annual events. And although there will probably be little if any crossover traffic, there is certain to be crossover content.

Take, for example, card check, otherwise known as the inaptly named Employee Free Choice Act. Tomorrow at RightOnline the first afternoon session is titled: “Forced Unionization: Card Check, Mandatory Arbitration, & Right to Work,” on why and how card check will cement progressive power.

At Netroots Nation, the AFL-CIO is hosting a session titled “The Secret Plan to Defeat the Right Forever,” on why and how card check will cement progressive power. It’s going on right now, but you won’t find it on the AFL-CIO site. They recently deleted the blog entry discussing it. Curious.

I was able to interview Erik Telford of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, organizer of RightOnline, about just why it is that both the left and the right would have such a similarly themed session at the respective events. Keep reading for that interview PLUS: the blog post the AFL-CIO doesn’t want you to see.

Read More →

The Hill has news of a new report that will show that Democratic Politicians will make out like fatcats if they are successful in passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) this Congressional session.

It is being estimated that unions would gain an additional $320 million to spend on political campaigns and much of this money would go right in the campaign accounts of Democratic politicians in D.C. and elsewhere.

Read More →

Patrick McIheran has a short piece on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s website that is a pretty good read. I think you should all check it out in its entirety here.

The piece has several links to other articles in it, but the main point is about the overgenerous and unfunded pension plans that unions all across the country have been foolishly allowed to negotiate. These pensions are simply untenable and always were but most businesses and unions kept kicking this can down the road until it is finally hit a dead end.

Read More →

The New York Times is attempting to spin gold from straw, telling us unicorns are real, expecting the Tooth Fairy to bring a windfall. At least, that is what it seems if we are to believe the Times’ fantasy card check union story from April 20. You see, the Times believes that an overwhelming anti-union vote held via secret ballot is proof that card check is necessary.

This pretzel logic insists that the employer in question was so underhanded that even a secret ballot was corrupted by the efforts by the employer to scare off employees from supporting the union. But, here is the thing that makes no sense: if the ballot is secret, since no employee’s name was connected to the vote, and if the employer was that mean to the workers, WHY did they still vote against the union?

Read More →

One of the more objectionable features of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is the card check feature wherein a union can simply gather publicly signed cards by employees agreeing to become unionized, thereby eliminating the secret vote for the workers. Opponents say this process is ripe for union abuse leaving workers open to any sort of intimidation and quashing their vote of conscience.

If any more evidence of how corrupt the card check system could be were needed, one need only look at a recent union organizer in Ohio to see the abuse that will happen with card check.

Read More →

Most lefties claim that “no” means “no,” but not where it concerns unions that have lost the organizing argument over and over again. We can see that refusal to listen to the workers in the case of Unions vs. Wal-Mart. Repeatedly Wal-Mart workers have generally refused to unionize, yet instead of taking that as an answer, the unions continue to push. And they are at it again.

The United Food and Commercial Workers is stepping up its efforts to organize Wal-Mart workers yet again.

Read More →

Wisconsin’s Eau Claire County lost 800 full-time jobs and a $50 million investment that was to be rolled out over the next five years because of the Democrat’s Card Check bill. And it wasn’t just a single county in Wisconsin that lost this multi-million dollar development. It was the whole U.S.A. that lost this project.

Thank you Barack Obama. Some help with economic “stimulus” and jobs you are.

Read More →

Senator Specter has confirmed to ATR that he will vote against both cloture and passage on the Employee Free Choice Act (also known as “card check” or the employee NO choice act). His vote is critical and this a major victory for freedom, as well as a stunning defeat for the other side.

The Senate has secret elections for its leaders. The House of Representatives also uses a closed ballot, one not open to public view, for its own members. We all, you and I, have a secret ballot when we vote for president or for our local officials at our local polling place. It’s one of the oldest aspects of the democratic system.

Yet, Democrats want to take that oldest part of the democratic process away from 105 million Americans.

For their support in the last election Democrats are poised to launch an effort to force a payback to Big Unions through Congress, perhaps as early as Tuesday. That payback will be in the form of the woefully misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” — which is neither free nor any choice. In this legislation, unions can dispense with the ages old secret ballot for union members and force them to sign public cards revealing their personal vote to everyone. Naturally, when a voter’s choice is known to everyone, pressure will be greater to conform and the conscience of the union member can easily take a back seat to that of getting along with union bosses.

Read More →

Editor’s Note by Erick: W. Thomas Musser is chairman of The Tri-M Group, LLC – an electrical solutions company in business 45 years – located in Kennett Square, PA. He knows first hand the dangers of card check.

This week, a number of economists will come together to tell Americans about their plans to “rebuild prosperity.” What they won’t tell us is how the law they promote, the Employee Free – or better stated Forced – Choice Act (EFCA) would single-handedly destroy the entrepreneurial, small business fabric on which this nation was founded.

The experts – with their Ivy League educations, swanky credentials, and sophisticated vocabularies – will talk a lot about “our interests” but fail to mention their own.

They’ll tell us how removing the right to a secret ballot in employee elections and publicly exposing workers to intimidation and coercion by union leaders – both in and out of the workplace – actually creates jobs.

They’ll explain that once a union is created and employee contract negotiations fail to reach an accord in 90 days that inserting a government-appointed arbiter will actually facilitate commerce and business activity.

What they won’t tell us is that the very unions that would benefit from their words and deeds funded these reports and conferences.

Read More →