| We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration will allow you to join in the discussion which is amazingly free of personal rancor and trolls! We are currently looking for posters from both the left and the right who have a demonstrated capacity to discuss fervently without letting personalities get in the way. Is that you? We need more staff. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Card Check | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Mar 25 2009, 08:03 AM (258 Views) | |
| Post #1 Mar 25 2009, 08:03 AM |
|
|
I was kinda groggy this morning as I listened to FoxNews in the background. Chris Wallace was on and was relating a tale about card check in an auto parts plant in Michigan. If I got the facts right as they were presented, card check was successfully used to get a union certified. After certification, a secret-ballot election was held, and the union was decertified. There were complaints of intimidation by union organizers. People claim to have been harassed until they would sign the card. If these indeed are the facts (and I have no reason to think otherwise; this is exactly what a rational person should expect), this incident is the smoking gun that absolutely establishes the undemocratic nature of the use of card check as the sole process of certifying a union. Naturally, I tried to verify these facts. News searches revealed nothing. No doubt, Chris Wallace was hyping some story to which he wants viewers to tune in. One still has to wonder, if this story is true, why it isn't getting more play. I will keep my eyes peeled. As soon as Fox (or any other news outlet) publishes this story, I'll link it here. |
Administrator
  ![]](http://z2.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)
|
 
|
 |
| Post #2 Mar 25 2009, 06:23 PM |
|
|
The full story was on Special Report this evening. The name of the company was Dana, an auto parts manufacturer in Albion, Indiana. The reason card-check was used was because Dana had signed a "neutrality agreement" with the union. I don't know what this is, but it sounds like the company did not want to take a position one way or the other on the question of employee unionization. (After this fiasco, I hope that Dana withdraws from this agreement and that no other company is so foolish as to expose their employees to this kind of harassment in the future.) This agreement allowed the union to hound employees of Dana until they had the 50% + 1 signatures. Several employees did not want to sign, but, after being followed to and from their cars day after day and after being "visited" at home at night, they caved. After the union was certified, employees who felt pressured into signing up for the union sued. They won the right to the secret-ballot election, the same right we all enjoy when electing public officials. The union lost this fair election--clearly establishing what will happen if card-check passes the Congress and is signed by President Obama. Unions that would lose secret-ballot elections will be able to harass employees into agreeing to a union, even when a majority clearly do not want a union. Yet, unions and Democrats insist on ironically naming this bill, that would make card-check routine, the Employee Free Choice Act and insist on saying that this law will not cause union abuse. We have here proof-positive that the bill prevents free choice and that unions will stoop to any low needed to get their 50% + 1. You may think this all worked out well. But, ask yourself, "What if this happens on a wide scale?" Union bad behavior will become routine and accepted. In many (not all) cases, the union will find a friendly judge. Shops that don't want to become union will become just that. The fact that some employees will successfully sue for a secret-ballot election won't decertify other union shops. The unions will have made overall gains and will have no reason not to abuse these non-secret-ballot elections. Even worse, we can expect the same side-effect that employees of Dana experienced. There are long-lasting hard feelings among people who used to be friends and will always be family. A not-so-civil war was fought and no one is completely happy with what was done and how it all came out. Let's make sure that this never happens again. Contact you representative and senators. Tell them that you absolutely expect them to vote against EFCA (card-check). Tell your senators to vote against cloture on the proposal. Let's grant to workers the same right to secret-ballot elections that we all enjoy when electing these same congressmen and senators. |
Administrator
|
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · General, in the News · Next Topic » |
2:32 AM May 22