Public Sector Unions and Lessons as yet Unlearned
Daniel Howes asked an excellent question in the Detroit News yesterday: What will it take for public-sector labor — with no ties to private, for-profit employers — to understand that the steady gravy train of the past 50 years has ground to a halt? In autos and steel, the UAW and the Steelworkers finally learned brutal [more...]

Posted Fri, 19 Mar 2010 .

Accepting the inevitable, AFL-CIO will back health care bill
Richard Trumka’s one block sprint to the White House yesterday afternoon paid off. This just in, from Politico: “A union official says the nation’s largest labor federation is strongly endorsing the Obama administration’s health care overhaul bill and plans to push wavering lawmakers for support. A union official familiar with the proceedings says [more...]

Posted Thu, 18 Mar 2010 .

Unions Working with Elected Officials to End Elections

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No sooner did the balance of power shift in Congress than did labor union leaders renew their call for the passage of the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act." This misnamed legislation would end the rights of employees to secret ballot elections when determining whether they wish to unionize, instead subjecting them to "card check." Under card check, unions can win new members simply by collecting signatures on cards, a system under which employees have no right to a private vote on whether unionization would be best.

Without any sense of irony, many of the politicians sent to Washington by secret ballot election are now laboring to end secret ballot elections in the workplace. Card check is a process that's rife with fraud and intimidation by union organizers, a fact that probably helped drive 75 percent of Americans to affirm in our poll that secret ballot elections are the fairest way of deciding union representation. Only 11 percent of respondents supported card check, which union leaders hope Congress will now make law.