{"id":2960,"date":"2008-07-30T07:37:54","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T12:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2960"},"modified":"2008-07-30T07:37:54","modified_gmt":"2008-07-30T12:37:54","slug":"dog-licks-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2960","title":{"rendered":"Dog Licks Dog."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sun Rises.<\/p>\n

Ice cream falls from cone to ground.<\/p>\n

Labor leader writes a misleading and blatantly-omissive article about the push against the “Employee Free Choice Act”.<\/p>\n

Look, I’m not anti-union.\u00a0 Indeed, unlike most DFLers, I’ve actually been a union member.\u00a0 I’m a firm believer in collective bargaining – and the right of people to opt out of collective bargaining.\u00a0 Unions give leverage to groups of workers.\u00a0 They have their downsides as well – which we’ll go into some other time.<\/p>\n

You’ve heard of the EFCA; the DFL in a flurry of publicity, sued the Coleman campaign for “lying” about the bill (and got their case promptly tossed for<\/a>, um, failing to show a single “lie”).<\/p>\n

I keep wanting to ask the proponents of the law – who write about the EFCA with the expected gauzy soft-focus – “What about the secret ballot? \u00a0 Does your union reject intimidation of dissenters? ”
\nBill McCarthy – in a piece apparently written<\/a> before the courts euthanized the DFL’s lawsuit – writes:<\/p>\n

In attacking the EFCA<\/span>, opponents distort the facts and charge that the legislation would end secret ballot elections in union organizing drives. Not true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, then!\u00a0 We must be headed for some clarity!<\/p>\n

The foundation of modern labor law, the Wagner Act of 1935, provided a path to union recognition when a majority of workers in a workplace signed union authorization cards \u2014 simple and fair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And more or less secret.\u00a0 Right?<\/p>\n

When labor adversaries passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over President Truman\u2019s veto, however, employers gained the right to reject the workers\u2019 union authorization cards and to petition the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election to determine if a workplace should become union.<\/p>\n

But the NLRB<\/span> election process bears little resemblance to elections to choose our leaders for local, state and federal government. In the run-up to NLRB<\/span> elections, employers pull out all the stops to intimidate workers into rejecting the union. These abuses are well-documented, including mandatory attendance at anti-union meetings, one-on-one meetings, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and even firing workers for pro-union activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what?<\/p>\n

Leave aside the screeching hypocrisy (unions did, and do, all of the above as well), a company’s got the right (or should have <\/em>the right) to keep itself competitive.\u00a0 Unions make them less so (or at least that’s the perception; in industries with less-elastic markets, it’s arguably less true, but then few markets stay inelastic for long these days).<\/p>\n

The EFCA<\/span> would give workers, not employers, the right to decide how to express the choice about going union: through the card-check process OR through the NLRB<\/span> election process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ahem:\u00a0 “What about the secret ballot? \u00a0 Does your union reject intimidation of dissenters?”<\/p>\n

If passed, the EFCA<\/span> will help expand the number of workers who enjoy union wages and union benefits like health insurance and retirement plans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(And will diminish the number of workers, period)<\/p>\n

And, uh, what about the secret ballot? \u00a0 Does your union reject intimidation of dissenters?<\/p>\n

If passed, the EFCA<\/span> will help expand the number of workers who have a voice on the job through their union.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leaving aside whether that “voice” is one that workers really want speaking for them, I’ll try again; What about the secret ballot? \u00a0 Does your union reject intimidation of dissenters?<\/p>\n

Or to put it another way – Does your union reject intimidation of dissenters? What about the secret ballot?<\/p>\n

Get back to me, Mr. McCarthy.\u00a0 Thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sun Rises. Ice cream falls from cone to ground. Labor leader writes a misleading and blatantly-omissive article about the push against the “Employee Free Choice Act”. Look, I’m not anti-union.\u00a0 Indeed, unlike most DFLers, I’ve actually been a union member.\u00a0 I’m a firm believer in collective bargaining – and the right of people to opt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}