Hillary Against Being For Labor Against Labor Unions
If you can follow that 
From: Howard McKeon
A former union organizer today detailed for the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions tactics used to manipulate workers as part of controversial “card check” campaigns. The panel met to hear testimony on legislation, the “Employee Free Choice Act,” that would strip workers of their right to a secret ballot in union organization elections and replace it with a mandatory card check that would end workers’ rights to freely choose whether to unionize. Card checks notoriously leave workers open to coercion, pressure, and outright intimidation. “I began my career with UNITE with a strong belief in worker’s rights and democracy in the workplace,” said Jen Jason, a former organizer for UNITE-HERE, a union that represents nearly a million workers and retirees in the textile, lodging, foodservice, and manufacturing industries. “During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric. I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on ‘the cards’ and the various strategies that they employed. I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at a worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a ‘service’ organization.” Tactics detailed by Jason included: · A “blitz,” in which union organizers go directly to the homes of workers; the workers’ personal information and home addresses used during the blitz are obtained from license plates and other sources that were used to create a master list. According to Jason, “The workers usually have no idea that there is a union campaign underway. Organizers are taught to play upon this element of surprise to get ‘into the door.’” · Rarely showing workers an actual union contract, which often does not reflect what a worker would want to see. Jason noted, “We were trained to avoid topics such as dues increases, strike histories, etc. and to constantly move the worker back to what the organizer identified as his or her ‘issues’ during the first part of the housecall.”
· Manipulating unit size, in which organizers would change the size of the group of workers they were going to organize after the drive was finished. According to Jason, “During the blitz, workers in every department would be ‘housecalled,’ but if need be, certain groups of workers would be removed from the final unit, regardless of their level of union support. In doing so, the union reduced the number of cards needed to reach a majority.”
“It is beyond me how one can possibly claim that a system whereby everyone – your employer, your union organizer, and your co-workers – knows exactly how you vote on the issue of unionization gives an employee ‘free choice,’” said Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the Subcommittee’s Senior Republican. “It seems pretty clear to me that the only way to ensure that a worker is ‘free to choose’ is to ensure that there’s a private ballot, so that no one knows how you voted. I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker’s democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it ‘Employee Free Choice.’”
The current right of workers to a secret ballot in union organizing elections also was brought into focus at the hearing. Charles I. Cohen, Senior Partner with Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius LLP and a former Clinton Administration appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), detailed the process.
“If a group of employees in an appropriate collective bargaining unit wish to select a union to represent them, the [National Labor Relations] Board will hold a secret ballot election based on a petition supported by at least thirty percent of employees in the unit,” explained Cohen. “The Board administers the election by bringing portable voting booths, ballots, and a ballot box to the workplace. The election process occurs outside the presence of any supervisors or managerial representatives of the employer. No campaigning of any kind may occur in the voting area. The only people who are allowed in the voting area are the NLRB agent, the employees who are voting, and certain designated employee observers.”
The decades-old right to this secret ballot would end if the “Employee Free Choice Act” were to become law.
“Simply put, the so-called ‘Employee Free Choice Act’ provides employees with anything but free choice,” concluded Kline. “It would replace a system today, in which workers are empowered to cast their vote on whether or not to unionize in a thoroughly monitored, federally-supervised private ballot election – with an unregulated, unmonitored “card check” process in which everyone – a worker’s employer, his coworkers, the union – knows how he or she votes.”
Take that all into consideration, and then watch Hillary Clinton, and others, somewhere where the major news networks aren’t:
