Free Republic

Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern has been hospitalized for fatigue in South Dakota, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday. Jullie Ward, a spokeswoman for Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, said the 89-year-old former senator from South Dakota was admitted to the Sioux Falls hospital for fatigue after completing a lecture tour. McGovern, a South Dakota congressman from 1957 to 1961 and U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981, ran for president against incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972 and lost in a historic landslide. He ran for president three times, making a try for the nomination in 1968 and 1984 in...

A bipartisan Senate vote to kill the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would have eliminated secret ballots in union elections, is (now) becoming reality ... the measure, which also would have increased penalties on employers (but not unions) for violating the National Labor Relations Act.

For those who may have written off Big Labor’s agenda after they failed to push the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act (EFCA) through Congress last year, they may want to take a careful look at the actions being undertaken by President Obama’s Administration and they’ll quickly find that the job-killing movement is alive and well. In fact, EFCA has been resurrected in three specific changes being advanced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Department of Labor (DoL). And this should not be a surprise to anyone, as union bosses have been very clear that they expect Obama to pay...

Union leaders, frustrated over their inability to sway Congress, more than ever are relying upon the National Labor Relations Board to enact stealth legislation. The board, now with a Democratic majority, seems willing to oblige them. Case in point: an NLRB proposal announced last Tuesday, June 21, and published in the Federal Register the next day, to substantially reduce the duration of election campaigns for union representation. While the board touts the regulation as an overdue streamlining of an inefficient system, its covert motive, say critics, is to hamstring employer opposition. That's because such campaigns typically begin months in...

Amidst a week of major events dominating the news landscape, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped a bomb last Friday afternoon.  Apparently, the NLRB felt the need to flex some muscle and has threatened to sue four states over laws passed by voter referendum in November.  The laws in question would guarantee workers the right to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not to join a union. NLRB's actions are a naked attempt to protect Big Labor's favorite organizing tool -- card check --  which also is a key component of the widely unpopular and job-killing Employee Free Choice Act.  Under...

As Americans prepare to head to the polls to exercise their right to a secret ballot on election day, the Obama administration is poised to roll back that right in the workplace. By Obama’s orders, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is looking over a policy change that would undermine the protections for a worker’s right to a secret ballot vote in union elections in the workplace. This elimination of a secret ballot is one of the policy changes that Big Labor has been pushing for several years now and is a chief component of the Employee Free Choice Act...

Big Labor is pouring money into two Democratic U.S. Senate races, attempting to secure a union pension bailout during a lame duck session of Congress. As previously reported on HUMAN EVENTS, new Federal Accounting Standards Board rules set to take effect on Dec. 15 threaten to shake up unions and the businesses entangled in multi-employer union pension plans that have been mismanaged and underfunded well before the 2008 financial upheaval. The economic downturn has only exacerbated the problem. Recent reports show hundreds of thousands of dollars in union cash pouring into races for Democratic Senate candidates Michael Bennet and Joe...

As we approach Election Day, it’s worthwhile to reflect on what has taken place over the course of the last two years. In November 2008, Big Labor was licking its chops anticipating passage of arguably the most significant change in labor law in American history. The bail out to union bosses known as the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act (EFCA) was imminent after Big Labor dropped nearly half a billion dollars getting the current administration and Congressional leadership elected. Yet, today, President Obama and labor bosses have lost support on their forced unionization agenda both with the electorate and in Congress....

As if Big Labor hasn’t already squeezed enough out of Congress with payoffs upon payoffs, they are now positioning themselves for one last-ditch effort to achieve the mother of all gifts, the job-killing Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act (EFCA). One of the biggest impediments to economic recovery is the uneasy feeling small businesses and employers are sensing across the country. Over the past 18 months, President Obama and some Members of Congress have injected a large measure of uncertainty into the economy through the introduction of controversial new laws, contentious administration appointments and deeply disturbing Executive Orders favoring political donors like...

During C-SPAN Newsmakers interview (8-8-10), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka comments on the importance of the Employee Free Choice Act, saying "it's part of the solution to creating an economy that really does work for everybody." He also said he thinks EFCA will be back on the floor by the end of the year.

Washington (CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama, seeking to rally support for embattled Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, on Wednesday pledged his support for a card check bill, which would eliminate secret ballots in elections to unionize workplaces. Obama told the AFL-CIO Executive Council that his administration has taken many measures to help union workers and move the beleaguered economy in the right direction.  “We passed the Fair Pay Act to help put a stop to pay discrimination,” Obama told the union leaders gathered in Washington on Wednesday. “We’ve reversed the executive orders of the last administration that were designed to...

Just headline so far. Did you really think Mad Dog Pelosi would rest? Awaiting similar news from Reid.

Why Democrats are Pushing the $165 Billion Union Pension Bailout by LaborUnionReport Somewhere lurking in the hot, putrid halls of Congress this summer is a union bailout bill of epic proportions and long-term ramifications. Whether or not Democrats can ultimately push it (or something like it) into passage is yet to be determined. However, with rumors that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) signed on as a co-sponsor on Thursday, it would appear that the union bailout is quietly creeping along. If it passes, though, its ramifications surpass the mere $165 billion-plus price tag, as it will influence the political landscape for...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) addressed the Communications Workers of America, reaffirming her commitment to passing EFCA: “Of course we are committed in our party and we passed over and over again and we hope that it will be the law of the land soon, the Employer Free Choice Act.” Union pressure to pass EFCA, or the card-check bill, began in earnest over a year ago, but the legislation– at the time– took a back seat to the health-care reform and “cap-and-trade” energy bill debates. Under the proposed legislation, if union organizers can get a majority of workers to sign...

...[T]he AFL-CIO removed the large banner supporting EFCA which had covered the corner of the building facing the White House for the past year or so...

So how do the Democrats hold onto power despite passing the wildly unpopular healthcare reform law? Do you think they'll just give up their majorities and the presidency and call it a day, proud of their accomplishment?

Not long ago union advocate Stewart Acuff penned a piece for the Huffington website that was filled with soaring rhetoric about unions “creating the middle class” and pleading for voters to pressure Congress to pass the absurdly named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). He claimed that this piece of… legislation would “restore the right to form unions and bargain collectively.” Despite Acuff’s urgent pleading, however, he misses an elephant in the room. No one has taken anyone’s “right to collectively bargain” away from them. Of course that wasn’t the only thing that Acuff was factually incorrect about. Why is it...

The Associated Press posted a story lamenting that Big Labor has failed so far to get Obama to heel by their commands. Big Labor has said "jump" and Obama has but skipped. The article is correct, though, that Big Labor has failed in its two biggest goals: socialist healthcare and card check. At least, they've failed so far. A third failure has also been forced upon Big Labor. As a result of newly seated Republican Senator Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts, Big Labor was not able to install Craig Becker as the head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)......

For the last several months, we have seen Big Labor pull every string and work every avenue to force unionization on workers. Whether it’s using the National Mediation Board (NMB) to change rules that have been in place for generations governing the airline and railroad industries, stacking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with radical nominees who will put forward the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act via administrative action, or whether its union bosses pushing forward with efforts to represent airport screeners, one thread runs throughout: an unquenchable thirst for money and power on the part of Big Labor bosses. The...

Labor Policy: And you thought card check legislation was dead? That certainly appeared to be the case last spring. But now there's talk of attaching it to a jobs bill. Dirty politics and lousy policy. Card check, known last year as the Employee Free Choice Act, is an attempt to fundamentally change the way unions organize. Under a card check law, a union would be certified if a simple majority of workers signed the cards that were used to gauge their interest in unionization. A follow-up vote through a secret ballot, the traditional method of certifying a union, would not...