Employee Free Choice Act

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as Union Corruption Update has argued on several occasions, is a misnamed piece of federal legislation. Under the guise of expanding a worker's choice of whether or not to join a union, it would remove that choice, intimidating employers in the process. The proposal is based on unsound economics. But it's likely also based on unsound constitutional law. That's the view expressed in a new report authored by a major legal observer in public policy issues, the University of Chicago's Richard Epstein. As congressional Democrats, with the full support of the Obama administration, are poised to repeal existing safeguards against unchecked union power, Epstein's analysis is indispensable reading.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as this publication has noted several times, is a classic case of deceptive packaging. The proposal, now pending before Congress, would effectively eliminate the secret ballot as a means of allowing workers to decide whether to join a union. Specifically, it would force an employer to recognize as binding the result of a union "card check" campaign that generates signatures from at 50 percent of affected workers who indicate a desire to join. Labor leaders from the start have admitted they seek to boost their ranks and retool themselves as a formidable economic and political force. What they won't admit is the possibility that EFCA, once enacted, would be counterproductive to the interests of workers as a whole. A new study concludes, however, that such a possibility is very real.

President-Elect Barack Obama’s cabinet nominations have caused observers across the spectrum to speak of his newfound “pragmatism” and “moderation.”  But his choice for labor secretary, Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., has very little about her that can be called moderate.  Union officials like it that way.  Solis, a four-term Congresswoman whose district encompasses eastern Los Angeles County communities, is a vocal supporter of organized labor.  And she writes like one, too.  In a March 2007 article for the Leftist blog site, The Huffington Post, she proclaimed:  “As the daughter of a union family – my father was a Teamster and my mother worked tirelessly for 25 years – I know that my seven siblings and I would not be where we are today without the wages and other protections my parents earned with the help of their union.” 

Statements such as these have top union officials happily brimming with expectations.  AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney remarked:  “We’re confident that she will return to the Labor Department one of its core missions – to defend workers’ basic rights in our nation’s workplaces…She’s voted with working men and women 97 percent of the time.”

News commentators routinely employed the words “transformative” and “historic” to describe the outcome of the presidential election this November 4.  While Barack Obama’s race was the main reason for such words, there’s little question that the new president-elect intends to radically transform the relationship between major American institutions and government.  Labor unions happen to be among those institutions.  Throughout the campaign, the Illinois Democratic Senator made clear his view that American workers have been getting the short end of the stick and need a new social compact.  Large Democratic majorities taking control of both houses of Congress this January will make the task of President Obama’s history-making a lot easier.  And he plans to make up for lost time in a hurry.    

Labor officials are savoring the possibilities.