EFCA Round-Up: Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Unfortunately, our Twitter feed is experiencing technical difficulties, which has slowed the pace at which we have been able to distribute news about developments. While we wait for the Support team to get us back and tweeting again, here are a few items from around the web:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce General Counsel Steven J. Law opines that "Card Check 'Lite' Is A Non-Starter" at CBS News.com, in part, because:
... the real "poison pill" of forced government arbitration is the way it would spread union pension fund financial problems to healthy companies and workers. Many union-run pension plans are headed toward insolvency because of risky real estate deals and politicized investing. The Card Check bill would empower government arbitrators to force newly-unionized employers into these pensions - putting them on the hook for huge funding shortfalls. Under pension law, a business owner could be stuck paying benefits to people who never worked for them.
And because pension liabilities are included on company balance sheets, a previously healthy firm could have its credit rating ruined overnight by being dumped into a collapsing union pension.
The Alliance for Worker Freedom today sent this letter to President Obama, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and all members of Congress:
It is very rare to create a new contractual agreement where none previously existed through arbitration. Arbitration is a last resort for labor and business if common ground cannot be found. EFCA will fundamentally change the arbitration process, shifting the power from private business and workers to a partial governmental entity (i.e. a government appointed arbitrator).
Current arbitration legislation is founded on the principle of mutual consent. Section 8 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) requires both employers and employee representatives to meet and bargain “in good faith with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment,” correctly encouraging negotiating members to compromise. Mandating governmental intervention changes the rules of the game, and thus, how negotiations will take place.
And TheTruthAboutEFCA.com expands upon our prior post regarding the evolving semantics of the debate:
Many in the employer community are concerned that proponents of the sadly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act have seized on a confusingly timed bit of news suggesting the “card check” provision of the bill is dead. That’s not the case — we hear constant stories about folks up on Capitol Hill trying to re-brand EFCA because it has become, in the words of Sen. Harry Reid, “toxic.”
