Union's Card Check gimmick
According to the Politico:
If a widget company had a 50-year sales slump and its market share had plummeted by two-thirds, it would have two choices: Either start making better widgets or spend lots of money to buy influence in Washington — and get new laws passed making it tougher to buy widgets from anyone else.
That’s the choice facing America’s labor movement, which has seen its share of the U.S. workforce dwindle from a high of 35 percent in the 1950s to just more than 12 percent last year. Today, unions represent a scant 7.5 percent of private-sector workers, with the rest of their members employed in government, their only significant growth market. Demographically, the news is even worse: The largest single group of union members is between the ages of 45 and 54, nearing retirement — while just 6 percent of unionized workers are between 16 and 24.
Sadly, many unions seem to be choosing government power and restrictive legislation as their way out of the wilderness, instead of enhancing their value proposition. The AFL-CIO and its affiliates plan to spend $200 million of their members’ money to elect pro-labor candidates in 2008. The Change to Win Coalition, another union group which split off after complaining that the AFL-CIO spent too much on politics, will spend an additional $100 million itself. Other unions will spend tens of millions more.
What makes this massive political spending so concerning is the element of coercion that lies behind labor’s political agenda. The centerpiece of that agenda is the Employee Free Choice Act, a masterpiece of Orwellian doublespeak.
The act would effectively strip workers of the protection of secret ballots in union certification elections. Replacing the privacy of the voting booth, workers would be asked to publicly sign cards indicating support for a union, exposing them to harassment and intimidation. Unions could badger workers repeatedly, at work and at home, to sign a card acquiescing to representation and, in most cases, employers would have limited ability to give workers their side of the story.... click to continue.
