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Forced To Join

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 3/1/2007

Labor: The House has passed a bill that makes it easier for workers to organize. It would also make it easier for unions to intimidate.

Called the Employee Free Choice Act, this bill is as misnamed as any piece of legislation that's ever been taken up in Congress. If the bill, approved Thursday 241-185 mostly along party lines, becomes law, workers will no longer be protected by secret ballots when voting to join or form a union. They will be vulnerable to intimidation from union heavies.

The bill actually eliminates the need for an election by secret ballot, which businesses have the right to demand. Under the legislation, a union is automatically certified the moment a majority of workers sign cards that authorize it.

It's called the card check process and it's appropriate for organizing workers, Democrats say, but it's not acceptable for decertifying a union. Democrats rejected that idea when Republicans tried to attach in committee a provision to allow card check decertification.

Without the security of secret ballots, imagine the pressure labor organizers could put on workers to sign those cards.

Unions — and their protectors in Washington — conveniently ignore organized labor's nasty history of readily resorting to savage, and sometimes deadly, violence against workers who didn't want to be a part of a gang or crossed a picket line to keep the family fed.

Yet the unions' record of violence is undeniable. The National Right to Work Committee cites "scholarly reviews of police and company records" that indicate more than "90,000 incidents of union violence have taken place since 1975."

Sometimes the violence is a slashed tire. Sometimes it's a homicide. (The National Institute For Labor Relations Research estimates 203 deaths have been caused by good ol' American unions since 1975.) Authorities nearly always excuse the violence.

Under the 1973 Enmons ruling, the Supreme Court granted union officials immunity from federal prosecution for extortion and violence — including murder — committed while they are pursuing "legitimate union objectives." It's a near carte-blanche for crime.

Do unions really need more government protection?

Beneath the lipstick, this pig is a clear payoff to the unions from congressional Democrats. With membership plunging — from 37% of the private work force in 1960 to 20.6% in 1980 to 7.4% last year — unions are desperate to save themselves. Democrats, whose party exists largely because of union donations in time and money, are willing accomplices, even if it means violating workers' right to vote in secret, free of coercion.

But then it's really not about the workers, is it? It's about union bosses gorging themselves on workers' dues to keep themselves in the rich lifestyles they're accustomed to and rebuilding their political strength. It's about politicians feeding at the unions' trough, while denying workers their basic rights.

House GOP Chief Deputy Whip Eric Cantor calls it "The American Worker Compulsion Act." Funny, yes, but all too accurate.

Should the Senate unwisely pass Sen. Ted Kennedy's counterpart union-payoff bill and both chambers agree to legislation, the White House has threatened to veto it.

We urge President Bush to do so. Then, at least someone with authority would be looking out for workers' rights.
 

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"In the days before volcanoes were invented, lava had to be hand carried down from the mountains and poured on the sleeping villagers.
This took a great deal of time." 

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