A Free Turkey From The Unions
These are dark days for free-market enthusiasts.
The gloriously uncomplicated path of more and more deregulation we trumpeted in years past now finds us facing on Wall Street a problem so complicated that our best and brightest (even Rush Limbaugh!) can no longer see their invisible hand in front of their face.
But amidst the dismal shadows, a ray of light: resurgent unionism. President Obama traded bedroom eyes with the unions as Candidate Obama, and now the unions want their own version of Hope and Change with the Employee Free Choice Act.
The most egregious, famous, and therefore easily assailable aspect of the bill is Card Check.
Here’s what you need to know: Current law mandates a federally-monitored secret-ballot election after 30% of a business’s workers publicly sign a card asking for one. The new Card Check provision would simply require the declaration of a union once 50% of workers signed the public card. The bill would then also greatly increase penalties for business (but not at all for unions) who attempt to coerce workers and mandate binding arbitration (the results of which are permanent for two years) when the new unions and their companies cannot come to an agreement on a new contract within 90 days.
This is outrageous.
UnionistsÑand their perennial allies in the Democratic PartyÑare making a naked attempt to stack the deck in favor of unions, workers’ private rights and desires be damned. Even George McGovern thinks that’s unfair.
But this presents the GOP with an opportunity. While we could (and, to my lights, should) go along with increased penalties for businesses that coerce workers in exchange for increases in unions’ penalties, we should fight like mad for the private ballot for workers. America should see us standing up for the worker and for the free enterprise system, not for telling the worker what’s best for him.
In the past, the American public looked up to unions. In the late-50’s, the head of the AFL-CIO was one of the most recognizable figures in American life. But after their failure to deliver on their promises, the fall of UAW-ensnared Detroit, and their, ahem, spotty history with the law, Americans just aren’t that into unions anymore.
And workers shouldn’t be forced to support them.
The gloriously uncomplicated path of more and more deregulation we trumpeted in years past now finds us facing on Wall Street a problem so complicated that our best and brightest (even Rush Limbaugh!) can no longer see their invisible hand in front of their face.
But amidst the dismal shadows, a ray of light: resurgent unionism. President Obama traded bedroom eyes with the unions as Candidate Obama, and now the unions want their own version of Hope and Change with the Employee Free Choice Act.
The most egregious, famous, and therefore easily assailable aspect of the bill is Card Check.
Here’s what you need to know: Current law mandates a federally-monitored secret-ballot election after 30% of a business’s workers publicly sign a card asking for one. The new Card Check provision would simply require the declaration of a union once 50% of workers signed the public card. The bill would then also greatly increase penalties for business (but not at all for unions) who attempt to coerce workers and mandate binding arbitration (the results of which are permanent for two years) when the new unions and their companies cannot come to an agreement on a new contract within 90 days.
This is outrageous.
UnionistsÑand their perennial allies in the Democratic PartyÑare making a naked attempt to stack the deck in favor of unions, workers’ private rights and desires be damned. Even George McGovern thinks that’s unfair.
But this presents the GOP with an opportunity. While we could (and, to my lights, should) go along with increased penalties for businesses that coerce workers in exchange for increases in unions’ penalties, we should fight like mad for the private ballot for workers. America should see us standing up for the worker and for the free enterprise system, not for telling the worker what’s best for him.
In the past, the American public looked up to unions. In the late-50’s, the head of the AFL-CIO was one of the most recognizable figures in American life. But after their failure to deliver on their promises, the fall of UAW-ensnared Detroit, and their, ahem, spotty history with the law, Americans just aren’t that into unions anymore.
And workers shouldn’t be forced to support them.