3/12/2009 12:30:00 PM State of the Economy Employee Free Choice Act
Tyeis Baker-Baumann President/CEO of Rebsco, Inc.
In the months ahead, if you have not heard much already, there will be a push in advertising and at job sites for the passage of legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA or Card Check).
This legislation is promoted by unions throughout the United States. The goal is to make it easier for unions to sign up new members and force bargaining agreements onto American businesses.
As currently proposed, the first section of the EFCA eliminates the right of employees to a secret ballot election on the subject of unions, favoring instead a mere check of authorization cards that unions would collect from employees and submit to the National Labor Relations Board. The card signing process would have none of the protections of secret ballot elections. This puts employees at risk for peer pressure, threats and miscommunication throughout the card signing process. Even though the proposed bill has not hit the floor of Congress yet, small business owners are already seeing the signs of organized labor efforts. Work crews and employees are being approached at job sites to sign the cards....and often the individuals making the requests are misrepresenting themselves and the purpose of signing the cards.
Beyond the card check provisions, EFCA also would require newly unionized employers to submit to compulsory arbitration of their first union contracts, in the absence of an agreement. This would mean that, for the first time in the history of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), every aspect of private businesses' wages and working conditions would be dictated by the federal government (through enforcement of the arbitration decision).
Personally, though I do believe unions served a useful purpose at their beginnings, I believe with OSHA, MSHA, the US Dept. of Labor, and all the other regulatory agencies which exist today, the usefulness of unions has passed.
Today, unions are a big business. However, they rely entirely on union dues for income. Because union membership has been dropping, their income is being impacted. EFCA is merely the big business of unions attempt to increase their income without a useful purpose, service or product.
As an employee, if you are not interested in turning over your ability to negotiate with your employer yourself, be sure to watch out for cards that say: "I hereby authorize," or "I hereby join" or "I hereby accept membership," or "I hereby designate". Be sure to read the fine print before you sign anything. If not, you may be giving away your rights to negotiate with your employer as an individual to a complete stranger who has the interests of a union foremost in mind!
You do have rights and you are protected from harassment and coercion - you cannot be forced to sign anything.
If you are an employer, I urge you to learn more about the EFCA initiative and to meet with your employees to discuss all the possible ramifications this could have on your business and you and your employees livelihood.
The economy today is stressed enough. I firmly believe EFCA would only create further problems, making not only this company but American businesses as a whole uncompetitive in the global market place. And we already know unions do not save jobs. Simply looking at the big corporations with union contracts can show us that reality.
I am not suggesting employees should be denied the right to unionize. I am saying the law, as it stands today, provides unions ample opportunity to solicit members, while maintaining employees and employers rights to be independent, to freely negotiate, to be flexible, to remain competitive, and to our privacy.
EFCA, however, would change current law and make it too easy for unions to impose themselves on employees and employers throughout the United States. It takes away your right to privacy. It takes away everyone's right to independently and freely negotiate.
EFCA, a bad idea whose time has not come!
Reader Comments
Posted: Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Article comment by:
Danny Brown
Unions were established way back in the late 1800's, to protect workers from injury and death. Greed of money, has catapulted unions too their current conditions. I say, let the unions go down with the auto makers, who will seek chapter eleven protection, reorganize, and our country, childrens future, will be back in line with our founding fathers declarations. From a Greenville resident who understood that way back in High School, who has not raised his children, or lived in the north since 1975.
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