When I was running a group of Department stores I used this pitch to help de-certify the unions. " You think by going union you will be protected from management." Let's say,"You are fired for a reason that you think is unfair and you don't have a union to protect you. The NLRB a government body is there to look after your interests and make sure you are treated fairly. Management, you and a NLRB member sit down and hear your case. The final decision is made by the NLRB. You pay no dues and your job is saved.(If the employer was wrong). Now assume you belonged to a union and the same thing happened. The meeting would be the same except one more party would be there (your union representative) the results would be the same, but, you would be paying dues.
Now, what happens if a SIEU member (Strongest most powerful union ) becomes the head of the government s National Labor Relations Board? Well, it has happened and Obama gave him this position after Senate Democrats refused to confirm him to the NLRB. Now, as a top lawyer for the SEIU Mr. Becker has suggested that the NLRB has the legal authority to impose card check-which eliminates secret ballots in union elections-without the approval of congress. And lo, at the end of August the NLRB dropped the bombshell, when, in a 3-2 decision, it decided to re-visit it's important 2007 Dana Corp. ruling.
Card check is a top labor priority because it allows a workplace to be organized if 50% of workers at the site sign a union card. Without a national law, unions have tried to persuade individual businesses to allow card check rather than secret ballots, and some have gone along.
When a workplace is organized after a secret ballot, workers are barred from a vote to "decertify" the union until after the the first negotiated contract expires. In it's Dana decision, however, the NLRB recognized that card check was an inferior substitute to secret ballots. It therefore held that when a company recognized a union via a card check, workers had the right to force an immediate secret vote on whether they really wanted to join that union.
The dana ruling is about protecting workers from union harassment. and if card check is as popular as unions claim, labor leaders should have no problem letting workers vote to ratify or reject a card check process. As NLRB member Peter Schaumber a Bush appointee, noted in his dissent to the NLRB decision to revisit the case, the dana ruling has in no way chilled the current card check process.
Since dana was decided, unions have been recognized via card check in 1,111 cases. The ruling has merely provided over site. In 54 of these cases, workers have demanded and received a vote on organization; In 15 of those elections workers voted against the union. This Dana reversal raises more questions about Mr. Beckers ethical standards. The labor lawyer has already refused to recuse himself from cases involving the SEIU, his former employer. Now, it turns out he has filed a brief for the AFL-CIO in the original dana case, arguing that there is no essential difference between card check and secret ballots and calling dana style protections "bad labor relations policy". Mr.Becker is clearly biased against dana and by any reasonable standard should not be able to rule on it.
Now that Mr. Obama went around the back door of congress to appoint his Mr. Becker it's time for Congress to investigate Mr. Becker's conflict of interest and turn the sensible dana decision into a statute that Mr. Obama's appointees can't override!
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