Employee Free Choice Act – NOT!
You better be quick and hop to, why because those who say they have all the answers have once again spoken; and this time they have deemed that the American worker must, absolutely must have the Employee Free Choice Act signed into law. To fail to enact this important, to hear them speak of it, act would be to rob the American worker of freedoms they do not currently enjoy. However, those who support the passage of this act, including our erstwhile President Obama and his Secretary of Labor nominee Congresswoman Hilda Solis, know that it’s not so much about free choice but more about the removal of the secret ballot from the American worker. Unions, just like their adversary employers, each have a vested interested in workers choosing to have or reject unionization. However, over the past decades unions have seen their membership rolls continue to thin out, except in California, with public-sector jobs being some of the few growth areas for unions.
So committed are the proponents of the Employee Free Choice Act that they descended on DC this week to lobby for this Act’s passage and to deliver a petition with one million signatures in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Now, I know that one million may seem like a large number, but keep in mind that there are approximately 16 million union members, and a untold numbers of non-union employees; so one million signatures is hardly a resounding endorsement of support. At the very least the union should’ve been able to deliver 16 million signatures or failing that 8 million. But one million signatures is just pitiful, but it does make an argument for Congress to quash the Act, because if union’s that have been the loudest advocates for this Act could get a petition with so few signatures then it would appear that the American workers prefers to retain their freedom to a secret ballot.
Supports of the Employee Free Choice Act like to argue that it only streamline the current system, but even Gov. George McGovern (one of the stalwarts of the Democratic party) has come out against it (to read his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed). He even went so far as to film a commercial asking, no begging, that the Democratic party should not become the party that takes away an employee’s right to a secret ballot. Click here to see his commercial . Of course supporters of the Act would argue that signing a card signifying the desire to join a union is equal, if not better, then the current secret vote. They even argue that in past unionization actions they have been bewildered at vote outcomes that reject the union when they can produce numerous cards showing that workers express an interest in a union. Of course there is vast difference between expressing an interest in joining a union versus actually choosing to join a union. I can express an interest in purchasing a Maserati but that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy one.
Congresswoman Solis’s confirmation is held up – it breaks my heart.
Oh the gnashing of teeth and the wringing of hands that must be taking place right now in the ivory towers of the union bigwigs, and the White House at the news that the confirmation of Congresswoman Hilda Solis for Secretary of Labor has been held up. Whether or not she is qualified for the position of Secretary of Labor isn’t so much an issue for as her obfuscation when she was asked about her support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Instead of laying it out for the committee she chose to word parse and pretend that she had formulated no opinion, since the Administration (i.e. President Obama) hadn’t “taken a stance”.
She wanted to act as though she was not one of the co-sponsors of record for the Employee Free Choice Act, and that the other co-sponsor was of course then-Senator Obama; and let’s not forget his campaign promise to sign the Employee Free Choice Act into law if it came to his desk. So with all this knowledge, Solis wanted her questioners to somehow believe she had no opinion. Oh and did I mention that she is on the Board of Directors and Treasurer of a group known as American Rights at Work, a group devoted to the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
As I use to tell my children when it was obvious they were attempting to pull the wool over my eyes – does Congresswoman Solis think that we’re stupid? An honest, and of course a completely uncharacteristic trait of most Washington insiders, would have been to make a clear distinction between what she as a Congresswoman and a representative of a group of constituents believed in and what she as a potential Secretary of Labor who must work with both business and labor leaders might be expected to believe in and how that might impact how the Secretary would do her work. But no, this was not to be, instead she sat there and said she had no opinion. Would such a lame excuse have been tolerated from let’s say fervent pro-business, anti-labor Congressperson been accepted – of course not. But then again I think that those individuals in Obamaland expect everyone else to simply buy their rhetoric without questions and we all know what road that can take people down.
If Solis wanted us to see her as an upstanding and ethical person she would have been brutally honest with the committee and explain how she would be able to put those earnest feelings into a context where they could be integrated into whatever policies the Administration championed and what ever laws Congress passed. Too bad she had to play the politician card, and too bad the Obama Administration showed the American people that the ”Hope and Change” President Obama promised to bring to America didn’t begin when he took the oath of office and apparently has yet to be implemented.