Obama Using Regulatory Power to Force Card Check

Congress has failed to pass Big Labor’s long sought after card check bill, the Orwellian named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The reason congress has not passed this destructive law is because the voters have repeatedly spoken by urging their representatives and senators to stand against it. The voice of the American people, though, does not interest President Barack Obama because he is gearing up to use his power to control America’s regulatory regime to force card check on the people anyway.

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One of the chief provisions of the card check bill eliminates the secret ballot and would force workers voting on union representation to make their vote publicly by signing a card that everyone can easily see. This procedure certainly leaves workers open to intimidation as union bosses learn just who voted for them and who voted against them. There are also other bad parts to the EFCA. One of them is that the government will force automatic arbitration on union and employer alike if no contract has been arrived at in the very short time that the government is forcing on them by law. In any case, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has decided in the Dana decision to uphold card check as a legal organizing tool quite despite that Congress has not cemented this in law. As long as the employer and union enter into a “letter of agreement” the NLRB has said that card check procedures are legitimate. This is a disaster for the centuries old democratic idea of the secret ballot. As a Washington Examiner editorial notes:

Thanks to this NLRB decision, expect to see many more occasions in which companies hoping to get a break on compensation agreements cave in to union demands for Card Check. The biggest losers in such deals are invariably the employees and not just because their right to a secret ballot is lost. In 2007, the SEIU provoked public outrage when it struck such a deal with California nursing home operators. The employer got major concessions — including union help lobbying the state of California for more tax-paid child care subsidies, while the SEIU got more union dues from thousands of newly unionized workers.

These anti-American, anti-democratic ideas are being defeated in congress by pressure from the American people. But President Obama is using his power to regulate to force them through anyway. This is yet another case of Obama bending to those special interests that gave him $400 million in campaign contributions and going against the will of the people. It shows how radical this man truly is.

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