| The Montana Chamber of Commerce says that I'm drinking Kool-Aid on the Employee Free Choice Act. That's fine, cause they're mixing the stuff up and handing it out.
The Chamber's rhetoric on this issue is repeatedly been one of concern for employees. That's funny because the Chamber doesn't represent workers. It represents management. And, as Jon Bennion admits in comments, they oppose all of the Employee Free Choice Act, even the provisions that heighten penalties for things like intimidating employees.
So -- the Chamber claims that they want to prevent workers from being intimidated. They do that by opposing meaningful penalties for intimidating employees...
Strange. Here's what I know -- pro-union employees get fired in 26% of union organizing drives. If the Chamber of Commerce wants to have an honest conversation about employee rights, we can start with that statistic.
This is the other "side" of the story that the Chamber is fighting to ensure that employees get a chance to hear. I don't know what the Chamber is smoking, but union organizing -- organizing of any sort -- is not an easy undertaking.
Union organizers don't waltz into workplaces and find huge crowds of happy employees clamoring for union representation. Usually, unions only start talking to people because they get approached by someone with a grievance. People aren't stupid. They don't want to pay union dues if they don't have concerns about their workplace. And they form unions because they don't trust their management to address the issues without a common voice.
Anyways, the Chamber accuses me of misleading and then jumps headlong into obfuscation with claims like this: Therefore, even if a number of workers in a bargaining unit wanted an NLRB election, once union organizers convinced a bare majority of their colleagues to sign cards, all workers would be prohibited from having a secret ballot election. Two things:- It wouldn't make sense to only have a "secret ballot election" with some workers.
- Under the Employee Free Choice Act, employees can file a decert petition if they choose -- and have a secret ballot election. Details here.
Jon also, rightly, points out that the Montana Chamber also represents a lot of small businesses. So he got me on that one. Hell, Forward Montana pays Chamber dues to get health insurance.
But the big business is lighting up on this. The U.S. Chamber is pledging $200 million on this fight. We're going to see a lot of ruckus being made by folks like CitiGroup to kill this bill, even as they take in billions in taxpayer money. |
