American Voters are the Victims of the Largest and Most Expensive Union Organizing Campaign in History

“The official AFL-CIO endorsement of presidential hopeful Barack Obama this week confirms that this November’s election will be the biggest and most expensive union organizing campaign in history,” says Peter A. List, Editor & Chief Blogger of EmployerReport.com.

“Big union bosses are projected to spend approximately $1 billion of their members’ money and send hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers to the streets across America to convince voters that Barack Obama is a different kind of candidate,” says List. “The reality is Obama is nothing more than a typical politician kow-towing to a special interest—Big union bosses. Unfortunately, these union bosses are underhandedly attempting to dupe Americans into electing a candidate who has promised his backers at the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federations to effectively do away with Americans’ right to a secret-ballot election on the matter of unionization.”

List is referring to the hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which he calls the “Kill American Jobs Act.” Despite the fact that unions win roughly 60% of secret-ballot elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, union bosses are pushing a bill that accomplishes three things for them:

First, EFCA eliminates Americans’ rights to secret-ballot elections on whether or not to become represented by unions through a deceptive and coercive process called “card-check.” Card-check enables unions to gain union representation when a mere 50% + 1 of a targeted workforce is talked into (be it through desire, deception, or coercion) into signing a union’s authorization cards. Under EFCA, union organizers will have the unfettered ability to misrepresent the purpose of signing a card, much to workers’ detriment, as workers will no longer have the ability to vote in secret their true desires on unionization.

Second. once unions gain representation of an employer’s workforce, EFCA forces an employer into binding arbitration after 120 days of negotiations, using a government-imposed bureaucrat to impose a contract governing an employer’s terms and conditions of employment, which could easily put a company (and its workers’ jobs) in economic peril.

Third, EFCA imposes grossly exorbitant fines on employers, under a union-controlled National Labor Relations Board, for allegedly violating workers’ rights. This provision will have the effect of chilling employers’ First Amendment rights, as employers will become fearful that anything that is said to workers targeted for unionization may become twisted into an allegation of an unfair labor practice charge.

“It’s unfortunate that American voters are being fooled into thinking Barack Obama is anything but a bought-and-paid-for lackey for big union bosses like Andy Stern, John Sweeney and their cronies,” says List. “Obama and his fellow Democrats’ insistence on passing this dangerous legislation will put more American jobs in jeopardy of outsourcing and subcontracting, as capital flees America like never before, and it will put many smaller companies out of business.”

“Americans should be warned now of the consequences involved with EFCA,” says List. “Because, if union bosses succeed in their plan to gain control of the federal government in November, the resulting loss of jobs that will occur due to EFCA will be staggering.”
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EmployerReport.com, launched on Labor Day 2006, is a free website that provides employers and the legal community news links and commentary on today’s labor unions.

Peter A.List, a former union activist, is Editor & Chief Blogger of EmployerReport.com, as well as Founder & CEO of Kulture, LLC—a nationally known labor and employee relations consulting firm assisting employers with employee and labor issues.