From Dan Testa's report on the Employee Free Choice Act:
But opponents of the bill counter that its main purpose is to boost membership in unions whose size, influence and reach are dwindling.
"Workers are not seeing the benefits of joining a union," Brown said. "I really feel they've lost their way; I think that's why their numbers are declining."
Brown charges that the bill could run the risk of interfering with businesses by mandating a government arbitrator settle disputes, and it could force higher wages out of small companies in an economy where profit margins are already thin. Furthermore, he added, the illusion of higher wages could be mitigated by having to pay union dues.
"It's a sneaky way, I think, of selling something that they can't sell straightforwardly, so they're doing it kind of backdoor," Brown said.
Of course the EFCA is about increasing membership in unions! That's the whole friggin' point! Remove the current worker-unfriendly barriers to unionization (that Testa elaborates on in this report), and more people join. Brown himself admitted that in an earlier Chuck Johnson report when he said, "the last report I saw from the National Labor Relations Board, they (unions) are winning two out of three elections. What do they want?" Er, they want employers to stop harassing workers who want to join a union. And imagine if penalties for harassing workers were actually punitive, and that disputes were quickly adjudicated, and the process couldn't be strung along for weeks or months. Unions would win a lot more than two out of every three elections!
Brown is somehow arguing that businesses should have the right to harass their workers and delay elections because unions are so dang popular...which is an odd argument to make, isn't it?
As for the benefits of unionization, well, ask a union worker. You'll spot them easily enough. They're the ones with decent health care benefits, vacation time, and pay... |
