EFCA Round-Up: Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Federalist Society hosts the latest installment of its Orginally Speaking series featuring a debate on EFCA with Richard Epstein (NYU/University of Chicago), Thomas Kochan (MIT), Eugene Scalia (Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP), and Patrick Szymanski (Change to Win). Among the notable quotables, echoing our observations about a recently released study, Mr. Scalia asserts:
As for the studies that purportedly link union decline to employer misconduct, they typically are unreliable on their face. One frequently-cited study by Professor Bronfenbrenner measured employer misconduct during organizing campaigns by surveying the union organizers. That’s like asking the Cleveland Cavaliers’ last opponent whether LeBron James got too many trips to the free throw line.
The Hill has an interesting piece of broader significance on "micro-targeting" by lobbying and advocacy groups. Included in the piece:
Alexander Gage helped President George Bush win reelection in 2004 by employing techniques that allowed the campaign to target its messaging to a few key groups. Now Gage, the CEO of TargetPoint Consulting in Alexandria, Va., says he is working on “four or five” public advocacy campaigns, a relatively new line of business for the firm.
His clients include a business group, which he declined to name, that is using microtargeting to find opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card-check.
Technological advances and basic trial and error in past campaigns have improved microtargeting modeling, Gage said, enabling firms like his to better determine “what sequence of information is the most indicative of who is going to support you.”
Finally, at the America's Future Now conference, a gathering of progressive activists, Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, told participants the Employee Free Choice Act is
