http://www.baltimoreexaminer.com/opinion...check.html

Obama's 'Card Check' is anti-democratic
By Examiner Editorial
- 10/8/08

Right after Tuesday night's presidential debate ended, a new ad was aired featuring 1972 Democratic standard bearer George McGovern, who, until Barack Obama came along, was easily the most liberal presidential nominee ever. McGovern was a reliable Big Labor ally throughout his Senate career, but not now. In the TV ad, he blasted Obama's "Card Check" proposal to abolish secret ballots in union representation elections in the workplace. Secret ballots must be preserved, he said, "because democracy is something that should never be sacrificed."

Card check � aka the "Employee Free Choice Act" - would require all employees to pay union dues as soon as 50 percent of employees sign a petition (a "card") demanding a union. Without secret ballots, everybody will know who didn't sign the petition, which will likely subject them to union retaliation and intimidation. As McGovern wrote in a recent column in The Wall Street Journal, "There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues."

Yet union bosses hold so much sway within Obama's party that every Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted for the card check bill in 2007. It was defeated only by a Republican filibuster. The measure passed overwhelmingly in the House. Virginia's U.S. Rep. James Moran and Maryland's U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen separately met recently with The Washington Examiner editorial board, and offered sheepish explanations of their votes for card check. "I'll vote with my party," Moran said. "There are only so many things I can take on. As a Democrat, you choose your battles. My battle with organized labor is on trade." Van Hollen offered little better. "Workers who were trying to organize were not getting a fair shake," he said. "But I want to stress that there is an opportunity here after this election to look at this whole situation� and figure out the best way forward." Pressed to explain why card check is the answer, Van Hollen demurred.

Obama isn't demurring. He clearly doesn't care about protecting workers from intimidation by union goons because he recently vowed that Democrats "will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It's not a matter of if � it's a matter of when." When a right as essential to democracy as the secret ballot is at stake, Democrats should recall what JFK said � "sometimes the party asks too much" � and follow McGovern's courageous example instead of Obama's slavish devotion to Big Labor's agenda.

This bill seems to make it clear that there are three oposinng sides in labor disputes, management, workers, and unions, all of which are promoting their own interests.

Since Obama is a co-sponsor of this bill, has McCain raised this as an issue? While it might be tough to take on the Democrats on a Big Labor issue without coming off as being anti-worker, he obviously needs to try something different. It helps that McGovern has already come out publically against the issue, although i doubt he would be willing to publically endorse McCain.

This is ridiculous. Who benefits from open union voting? The unions and no one else.

Unions are a seniority based system where the productivity and quality of an employee is ignored. If a union member works his ass off his raise will be the exact same as the worker who does nothing so why should he bust his ass if there's no payoff in the end?

Anyway, the laws we have today support unions. Union organizers are actually allowed to lie to potential members because the Supreme Court ruled an informed worker will be able to sort out fact from fiction - but management can't lie. Management can't use threats or violence but when there's a strike who is the first to use them?

The on going strike with Boeing and it's union is a great example of stupidity- The unions are striking when the economy is dead and Boeing offered each worker about $36,000 in bonuses, raises and benefits and the union turned it down.

It would take an extraordinary person to put someone else's job before his. Do I think union leaders put the members jobs as their number one priority? There number one priority is there own job.

Whenever I was involved in union negotiations the first thing they wanted - EVERYTIME - was for the company to automatically withhold the dues from its employees and pay it to the union. They didn't trust that their own members would pay them on time or at all.

Oh, I almost forget, the democrats support open ballots in union voting but what would they say if we did the same thing in our political voting process? What a bunch of phony hypocrites.