'Card check' compromise foes to meet with Feinstein

[Enrique]

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/card-check-compromise-foes-to-meet-feinstein-2009-05-30.html

Business leaders are scheduled to meet next week with a prominent Democratic senator who has proposed a compromise on a contentious union bill that industry has heavily lobbied against.

According to a schedule obtained by The Hill, executives are visiting Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) next Wednesday as part of a lobbying push against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), legislation that would make union organizing much easier if passed. Business leaders from 12 different states, organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are flying into Washington next week to lobby against the bill.

Feinstein has emerged as a key voice on the legislation. At first, her support for EFCA wavered since she is not a co-sponsor of the bill this Congress, unlike two years ago when she also voted for cloture on the bill. But now, Feinstein has floated a compromise for one of the bill’s provisions to help garner support from Senate centrists who are worried about angering the business community by voting for the bill.

EFCA is often called “card-check” because one of its provisions would allow workers to form unions not by secret ballot elections called for by management but by a majority of employees signing petition cards stating their intention to organize.

Feinstein’s compromise would replace that provision with a requirement that union elections be decided by mail-in ballots with the design that workers, not employers, would have a choice on when to form a union while their privacy would be protected from labor organizers.

(...)

Union officials have been somewhat open to changes in the bill but business groups have lobbied against any compromise, saying the legislation would hurt industry revenue by leading to more strikes and work stoppages. They have hammered Feinstein’s proposal because they believe it would still lead to intimidation of workers by union organizers.

(...)

[ananda]

1. Feinstein is already compromised.

Yuck.

[Enrique]

2. her compromise might lead to EFCA being passed

we'll see...

[AllentownJake]

3. Intimidation of Workers by Union Organizers?

Oh that is rich.

Every time workers think about organizing the Company calls them all into a room threatens to close the plant or store and than forces them to watch a video on the evils of Unions.

Than if it progresses they find excuses to lay off any worker who is organizing.

Intimidation of Workers?

Fucking snakes.

[Selatius]

4. What you outline is the biggest abuse employers engage in with respect to unions.

In addition, they have blatantly fired employees once they have been identified as being either pro-union or are attempting to form a union. This is illegal, of course, and the NLRB fines companies that do it, but they only do so after a union files a complaint, and even then, there is no guarantee the employee gets the job back, and the fines, if any are levied, are often small enough that the employer, especially big ones like Wal-Mart, are not discouraged from the same behavior.

The system the US has in place to handle conflict between management and labor is decrepit. It is underfunded and understaffed. The enforcement arm in the NLRB that polices unions has gotten more funding than the arm that is supposed to police employers.

[AllentownJake]

5. Not to mention what happens when their is a GOP administration

and labor complaints are outright dismissed in favor of Big Business.

This recession was caused by big business, now they are threatening us with taking away even more and more if they don't get what they want. They have taken their approaches against Organized labor to a higher level.