Congresswoman Betsy Markey is co-sponsoring Card Check legislation that would empower labor unions and their coersive tactics.  Card Check is an attempt to end private ballots in favor of publicly signed cards.  More than 60 newspapers across the country are opposed to legislation while only three favor it.   Even the very liberal former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern opposes Card Check, a.k.a. the Employee Free Choice Act.  In a Wall Street Journal editorial McGovern wrote of his concerns.

As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.

The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.

The key provision of EFCA is a change in the mechanism by which unions are formed and recognized. Instead of a private election with a secret ballot overseen by an impartial federal board, union organizers would simply need to gather signatures from more than 50% of the employees in a workplace or bargaining unit, a system known as “card-check.” There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.

Under EFCA, workers could lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder, free from fear of reprisal.

According to Open Secrets, Markey received $241,000 in campaign contributions from labor union.   Considering how much they stand to benefit from Card Check, that’s probably a good return on their investment. 

Yesterday, I sent an email to the Congresswoman’s press secretary Ben Marter about Markey’s position and invited her to be a guest on the show (again) but have yet to receive a response.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 8:27 am and is filed under labor unions, northern Colorado, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.