By Kevin Mooney
Card Check is best understood as a “labor bailout bill” set up to reverse the declining fortunes of unions and to allow for the “hostile takeover” of American businesses, said Mark McKinnon of the Workforce Fairness Institute, during a recent conference call with reporters.
He was joined by Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes Magazine, who said the secret ballot and binding arbitration provisions in Card Check would move the U.S. more in the direction of a “Soviet style” labor-management system.
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, said in separate interview he does not think there are enough votes in the Senate to pass Card Check since Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-AR, announced earlier this week that she opposes the measure. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA, another possible swing vote, has also said he will oppose Card Check.
The card check bill, formally titled The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) passed in the House last March but fell short of the 60 votes require for cloture.
“Last year was a free vote for Blue Dog Democrats and moderate Republicans who do not want to support this bill because everyone knew Bush would veto card check,” Phillips said. “The House could pass it this year but the Blue Dogs and the Republicans who supported it last time do not want to walk the plank. They want the Senate to go first where I don’t think they have the votes.”
Card check was re-introduced last month but had seven fewer co-sponsors in the House and seven few co-sponsors in the Senate than when the bill was introduced in 2007, despite expanded Democratic majorities this year. There are now 223 co-sponsors in the House and 40 in the Senate.
Instead of pushing for legislation that will coerce workers into joining unions by way of “card check” organized labor should look for ways to make themselves for more relevant to the needs of the 21st Century, James Sherk, a Heritage Foundation policy expert has argued.
The manufacturing economy of the 1940s and 1950s has been replaced with an information-based and knowledge-based economy, he points out. Robotics and computers have replaced the kinds of jobs where the same functions were performed day in and day out, Sherk said.
“Who you are is what matters,” Sherk added. “You are not just a cog in the machine. Individual talents, skills and initiatives are what count. In an economy where workers are much more mobile between jobs and there is no expectation of having one job for life unions make less sense because collective contracts are not as relevant.”
