Constant Conservative

I’ve written about EFCA (aka Card Check) several times. I was glad to see today’s editorial from the Rapid City Journal (from which an excerpt follows):

We’re disappointed by the recent news that Sen. Tim Johnson would vote for cloture on the controversial card check bill. Johnson’s vote would allow the bill to reach the Senate floor for debate.

A vast majority of the business and professional groups in South Dakota oppose this legislation and have made their case clear, pointing out the potential damage the legislation could do to the business — and by extension the working — community in South Dakota.

The RJC assumes that as an elected servant of the state, Senator Johnson will take his constituent’s concerns into full consideration. This is not always how it works. And, while there are times when a brave person must vote for the right thing (regardless of how his constituents may be aligned), I would venture that this is not one of those times. Instead, it would appear as though the Senator is following his party’s leadership down the path to increased government control of the means of production.

The legislation known as Card Check (or the Employee Free Choice Act) hasn’t gone away so much as it has been placed on a side rail for later. The Rapid City Journal addresses Senator Johnson (and his probable role) on the legislation when it comes to a vote:

Sen. Tim Johnson is at epicenter of the debate over the legislation that would change the way unions can be organized. Johnson is considered a swing vote on the issue and, because his name is on the bill, a possible vote in favor of it.

It’s a tough spot for the South Dakota senator who is feeling the pressure from both sides.

We would encourage Johnson to vote against any card check legislation, as it is bad for business and bad for an ailing economy and may restrict the freedoms of the American worker.

Kudos to the RCJ for a clear call for action. Here’s hoping the Senator is reading/will read the paper.

Well, maybe not inflating the value, per se, but maybe stating there is value when there is not. Once again the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is in the news. I would disagree with that linked article: the battle is not between business and the unions, but rather between freedom and coercion.

Though the President’s administration can spin it any way it would like, EFCA or “card check” as it it often known, is little more than paying back the labor unions for backing Obama. Not all of our elected officials are interested in supporting this particular quid pro quo arrangement, however:

Members of Congress should be working to alleviate unnecessary costs imposed on small businesses instead of pushing a union-backed bill that will create additional economic restrains in a recessionary climate Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said in Thursday conference call.

America’s unemployment rate could top 10 percent under the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), if it boosts union membership as much as some supporters have predicted, according to a new economic study.

Why does anyone believe that adding more complexity into the relationship between those who need work done and those who need work done is beyond me.

When laws are passed which make it more difficult for a person to be fired by his/her employer than it is for that same person to “fire” his/her spouse via legal divorce, there is something seriously wrong with the underlying system of law.

Coming soon to a national legislative body near you: the Employee Not Really Free to Make a Choice Act. This bill, sometimes referred to as the “card check” legislation would do away with the secret ballot process to creating a new union (though supporters say it doesn’t do away with the secret ballot, just gives people another way beside the secret ballot).

My grandfather served as the shop steward for his union and I’m sure had many stories he could have shared with me, except for the inconvenient truth that he died 31 years before I was born. Nonetheless, I believe I can understand where this person is coming from with reference to the upcoming constriction of our freedom:

Granted, labor unions aren’t what they used to be, and neither are votes. Like many an institution that started out with a great idea, unions have become self-oiling cash machines of little use to anyone but the bureaucrats and fat cats that feed off them. Do union members really benefit as they once did? In some unions, maybe. I haven’t seen it. Mostly, as far as I can tell, labor unions exist as mechanisms for collecting union dues, which are used for various purposes including greasing the skids for politicians who will do whatever it takes to keep those union dues rolling in. I can hear the wheels turning: Are those pesky secret ballots limiting the number of union shops because workers don’t want to pay union dues for benefits they’re already getting? Get rid of ‘em! Coercion is so much more efficient.

[...]

Okay, another expected defeat for traditionalists like myself, a defeat (unlike others pending) that is not even a sacrilege against the Constitution, which doesn’t guarantee the right of a secret ballot. But I don’t even apologize for fearing that this is just the middle of the beginning of the end of the secret ballot across the board. First workers fill out a convenient card, bypassing that pain-in-the-neck secret ballot, getting people used to the idea. Later, somewhere down the line, you and I point and click on a convenient screen (maybe even the TV screen following a really rousing speech), bypassing that pain-in-the-neck trip to the polling place. Goodbye, secret ballot, goodbye.

Sounds a bit farfetched? Remember, no law which is passed is exempt from that greater law (some might even call it a natural law): the law of unintended consequences. The writer of the piece above is not alone in the belief that passing EFCA may well lead to much less freedom down the road.

Paul at PowerLine has a very good piece on the mentality which drives labor union leadership (which I touched on a bit with my post on Mr. Stern of the SEIU). Here’s an excerpt of the PowerLine piece, which is worth reading in its entirety:

In essence, Stern argues that a union election isn’t like the elections we have in the U.S. in which we choose, for example, the members of Congress. According to Stern, a union election is the equivalent of an election over whether we should have a Congress.

The question-begging nature of Stern’s argument is evident. Stern simply assumes that the desirability of having a particular union, no matter how thuggish or corrupt, represent a particular set of employees is as self-evident as the desirability of having Congress represent the people of the United States; therefore the issue need not be put to a proper vote. Under this absurd reasoning, it’s not clear why unions should even have to obtain authorization cards, and there’s little doubt that Stern would like them to be exempt from even this requirement.

Here in the US, unlike countries which have parliamentary systems with “shadow governments,” we do our best (well, some of us anyway) to stay away from parallel power structures. It would appear to me that Mr. Stern and others in authority within the SEIU, UAW, ETC would like to create/maintain parallel structures with existing US legal authorities. Of course, in such cases, the best we could hope for would be an oligarchy of the labor leadership, but more probably we would have a series of dictators.

I do not believe I am overstating the case here. Labor unions, broadly speaking, are well past trying to help the “little man” and well on their way towards that Western European goal of wielding quasi-governmental powers. There are a number of reasons  many of us left Europe, but this is one reason I have no desire that we become Far-Western Europe.

The ill-named “Employee Free Choice Act,” about which I’ve written previously, looks as though it will be coming soon to a federal legislator near you. South Dakota’s delegation is split rather evenly on the issue (an interesting thing in itself, considering we have 3 members). By that I mean we have one for it, one against it and one who is still making up her mind:

Johnson was a co-sponsor of the bill, spokeswoman Megan Smith said, making it “pretty clear” where he stands on the issue.

Sen. John Thune opposes the measure. “The right of the secret ballot is a time-honored principle in American elections,” he said. “It’s one we ought to preserve.”

[...]

Russ Levsen, a spokesman for Herseth Sandlin, said South Dakota’s lone representative in the House continues to talk with stakeholders.

“It’s possible improvements can be made to the bill,” he said by e-mail, “but also important to bear in mind that the Employee Free Choice Act passed the House with bipartisan support because it’s a fairly straightforward idea: Workers should get a right to vote whether or not to organize a union free from pressure or fear of retribution from their employer, and that vote should be transparent and fair.”

If and when it returns, it’s likely to pass easily in the House. The Senate is a different story.

Thune thinks there are three or four Democrats that could help Republicans stall the measure again.”This time around, they are going to try, I think, to run it early,” he said. “It will be one of the first things they do as a payback to the unions.”

Go read the whole article and then get ready to email, mail or call your congresspeople. This bill is nothing more than an attempt by the labor unions to prolong their time in power. If we as a nation are truly interested in seeing a better future for all of our industries, across the board, then we would do well to ensure that (despite backing from the One) this bill fails quickly and spectacularly.

In short, let’s climb out of this crevasse before it widens.

From two clear-thinking economists at UCLA back in 2004 comes something of note: Roosevelt was the one who kept the Depression alive after it should have been long gone. How can it be that President “chicken in every pot” Roosevelt actually contributed both the general absence of edible chickens and the exorbitant price of the pot?

After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”

Well, knock me over with feather, why don’t you. Economic relapses are not “likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill conceived stimulus policies.”

“High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns,” Ohanian said. “As we’ve seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market’s self-correcting forces.”

The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

Is not there a bill in Congress right now which would increase collective bargaining power once again by doing away with the secret ballot process and make it a crime for an employer to increase salaries/wages during the period when the employees are considering the creation of a union? I think it is called the Employee Free Choice Act. Unfortunately it does nothing to make the choice of any employee “free.” Rather, it would allow for unions to know who is preventing a new group from signing up for collective bargaining so pressure can be brought to bear. John McCain is very much opposed to this bill becoming law with Barack Obama firmly in favor.

The article concludes with the following:

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

“The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. “Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”

So, the conclusion of these economists is precisely the opposite of the common thought which seems to be driving the Federal governments current response: that capitalism works if one just leaves it alone.

Please, read the whole article and then send it to your representatives and senators in DC and let them know that we are not interested in a New Deal, or a Better Deal or any deal which has government further interfering with the markets. Yes, I realize that they’ve already signed the bailout bill. However, that does not mean that government intrusion in markets must continue apace.