Thread: Bill Easing Unionizing Is Under Heavy Attack

Bill Easing Unionizing Is Under Heavy Attack


By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: January 8, 2009

WASHINGTON — Intent on blocking organized labor’s top legislative goal, corporations are quietly contributing to lobbying groups with appealing names like the Workforce Fairness Institute and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.

Raul Rubiera/Fayetteville Observer, via Associated Press

Workers at the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, N.C., in 2006. They voted to unionize last month.

These groups are planning a multimillion-dollar campaign in the hope of killing legislation that would give unions the right to win recognition at a workplace once a majority of employees sign cards saying they want a union. Business groups fear the bill will enable unions to quickly add millions of workers and drive up labor costs.

The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, a federation of 500 business groups, ran a full-page advertisement on Wednesday that sought to discredit the legislation, called the Employee Free Choice Act. The advertisement said that if secret ballots were good enough to elect Barack Obama then they should be good enough for union members, too.

Richard Berman, a Washington lobbyist, has created a business-backed group, the Center for Union Facts, that is planning to run millions of dollars’ worth of television spots over the next few months to pressure moderate Democrats to oppose the bill.

During last fall’s presidential campaign, groups opposing the legislation spent more than $20 million on television commercials in Colorado, Maine, Minnesota and other states in an effort to defeat Democratic Senate candidates who backed the bill.

At a confirmation hearing set for Friday, Republican senators are expected to challenge Representative Hilda L. Solis of California, President-elect Obama’s choice for labor secretary, over her support for the legislation.

Business leaders denounce the bill because it would largely eliminate secret-ballot elections to determine whether workers want a union. (The union win rate has traditionally been far higher through majority signups than elections.)

“If you know anything about politics, it is a game changer,â€

Ya. Time for unions to come back. The only reason the corporations dont want this is because it will RAISE WAGES FOR UNION WORKERS. And when wages go up for union workers they go up for everyone because all other employers have to compete with those wages. Maybe we will someday have a middle class in this country again.

i think they should be secret ballots. and having participated in an election using secret ballots and actually having to count them as well, I dont know to know who voted for what, i just want to know what the final vote was

Originally Posted by jamesw62

i think they should be secret ballots. and having participated in an election using secret ballots and actually having to count them as well, I dont know to know who voted for what, i just want to know what the final vote was

It is what takes place before the secret ballot that is the problem, not the secret ballot iteself. With sign on the process is shorter for one thing...and less intimidating for another. There is no management coercion with sign on. The employees just are free of pressure from management. That is as it should be. And many times with secret ballot the management will fire older employees and hire new ones to block union organizing. That way the union has to keep starting the organizing process over and over again. People lose jobs....even the few that might not have voted in favor of the union.

Has the opponents of Unions got people in their electronic records?

Do you want your medical records to be electronic?

Originally Posted by vmonkey56

Has the opponents of Unions got people in their electronic records?

Do you want your medical records to be electronic?

I dont think that electronic medical records are a good idea, vmonkey. They are transferred or hacked too easily. I would rather have it on paper in my doctors office where it belongs.