It's in the Cards For Labor

by Brad Peck

In a Washington Times commentary, Steven Law, chief legal officer and general counsel at the Chamber wrote:

In recent weeks, the Service Employees International Union trumpeted it had earmarked $10 million solely to weed out Democrats who don't toe the union line in 2009. Why such urgency? Earlier this year, the Labor Department reported that union membership actually grew in 2007. This seemingly good news for organized labor was tempered by two other bits of data: the slight uptick - just one-tenth of 1 percent - was so small as to border on statistically insignificant, and was the first increase in a quarter-century.
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To rebuild, union officials need to decide if they will try to convince workers that joining a union will improve their lives, or pour more money into politics and seek legislation that will essentially force people to join a union. Unfortunately, many have chosen politics and coercion. Unions plan to spend upward of $400 million on political activism in 2008 with one goal: electing politicians who will take away workers' ability to vote in secret ballot elections when deciding whether to form a union. This antidemocratic proposal, in true Orwellian fashion, is called the Employee Free Choice Act but is better known as Card Check.
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But pursuing a political solution to organizing is a high-risk strategy. A recent national survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that 85 percent of voters opposed Card Check as anti-worker and anti-democratic. Other polls have confirmed the same thing. Unions will have to spend vast amounts of their members' money to overcome voters' rejection of Card Check. So far, they seem intent on doing just that.

Read the entire commentary.

Comments

[John]

Being someone who analysis various industries for a living, one option that perhaps unions are unwilling to consider, is that if union growth has been stagnating for a quarter-century, perhaps the need for them in declining. Capital punishment has had its time, and modern society has deemed is wrong (in most states). Perhaps the age of unions have come and gone. I'm not saying they are useless though. In their time, there were a very powerful tool used to improve working environments and employment regulations. But we have come a long way in the past 100 years, and don't have nearly as far to go. Consequently, I feel that the need for unions to exist is dwindling. When unions force steelworkers to go on strike because they are not getting sufficient government subsidies, they are not looking at the global picture, which is that its cheaper to make certain products abroad. Global Macroeconomic drivers, including increasing globalization, are beyond the control of unions... so maybe its time for another type of employee protectionism. Unions: thank you for your services.... its time to move on.