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News Blogs
 
Employee free choice?
By Carl Strock
Sunday, August 17, 2008
If you’re a labor union and you lose 40 percent of the elections in which workers vote whether or not to have you represent them, and further, if you find it relatively easy to get unorganized workers to sign cards saying they want you to represent them, especially when you stand right over them and watch them sign, what do you do? The answer is obvious: You promote a federal law to forbid elections and to accept signed cards instead. And what do you name the proposed law? That’s easy too. You don’t name it the “Election Suppression Act,” or, the “Strong-Arm Sign-Up Act.” You name it the “Employee Free Choice Act,” as any student of George Orwell could tell you. And in fact there is such an act hanging fire in the Congress of the United States, where it’s also known as HR 800. It requires an employer to recognize a union as the legitimate bargaining agent of its employees if a majority of those workers sign cards that are handed to them by union organizers, and it would forbid the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election to see if that’s what the employees really want, as is done now. Who would possibly support such a bill? That’s easy too: Democrats, by and large, including Barack Obama on the national stage, and the various Democratic candidates for Congress on the local stage – Paul Tonko, Phil Steck, and Tracey Brooks, as well as current Congresswoman, Kirsten Gillibrand. Why? Because the big unions want them too, that’s all. It would increase their power. Big unions are as fundamental to the Democratic voting base as oil companies and born-again Christians are to the Republican voting base, and when they say dance, Democratic candidates know enough to dance. You can read more about this intriguing subject in my column in the Sunday Gazette, which I hope you will not hesitate to buy.
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July 4, 2009
7:38 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Come on Mr.Strock. You've been in the tank with the liberalcrats since I started reading your paper years ago. Now that the house of cards they created (NYS government) is going to collapse you want to bail out?
Too little too late.
5:42 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention. You inspired me to write further on the subject, and to also ask the meaning of "bipartisan." See
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/...
4:51 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Huh? Strock a liberal (or a conservative, for that matter)? What paper do you read?
And where is he calling for a "bail out"? Maybe you are reading a different paper, 'cuz you don't seem to be commenting on the above topic.
10:47 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
What a great piece of legislation.
The "EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT" should go right up there with other great governmental advances in history, such as the series called the "JEWISH ASSISTANCE AND PROMOTION ACTS" passed by the Germans throughout the 1930's and 40's.
1:08 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Dear Mr Strock,
Another expert opinion, another expert speculation. The free choice act gives the employee the right to form a union without the harassment and intimidation of the employer. Instead of debating this with you I would say that the employer is not this innocent bystander being picked on by the union. I work in an A.R.C. (Association for retarded children). We have been trying to organize a union at my workplace for the past two years. I’ve had very good coworkers fired by the employer because they identified themselves as union supporters. Why is it that an hourly employee can get suspended for seven days and not told why? After the employee gets an attorney, they find out that they were suspended because they were seen pointing at a consumer after that consumer almost broke the staff person’s finger. On the other hand why is it that a Director of residential services is still working after she has a 147 ( allegation of abuse) for removing one on one oversight protection requested by a NYS appointed advocate. After suspicious injuries are identified, Double standard, Nah. Why is it that the employer can put out biased information on agency memo’s and the employee’s can‘t even talk about the memo. Could this be a Dictatorship? Nah. Mr. Strock, what I do for a living most people would not do or even consider it important, unless you have a disabled child or family member.