The editorial pages of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune -- the paper of record in a critical battleground state -- had this to say today:

But the EFCA has the potential to do more harm than good. Its provision allowing unions to bypass a secret ballot with something called a card check is a serious problem. Under the proposed law, unions could bypass a secret ballot if 50 percent of eligible employees signed an authorization form to form a union. It doesn't make sense: Would you pass a school levy or elect a mayor this way? The proposed card-check system also would invite peer-pressure from union sympathizers and, by making a supporter's name public, it has the potential to heighten the risk of employer retaliation.

The bill's stiffer penalties for employers who retaliate illegally are welcome. But backers need to rethink the proposed card check. Even if you agree there's an imbalance of power, doing away with the secret ballot isn't the solution. Unions exert a great deal of influence over members. They have the ability to tax through dues. They negotiate workplace rules that govern a big chunk of members' lives. The organizing process should be as democratic as possible. That means honoring the secret ballot, not doing away with it.

Page A14 of today's Wall Street Journal documents "Big Labor's Comeback" underway at the Democratic National Convention:

Card check is merely the start. Next on the agenda is a campaign to repeal "right to work" laws in the 22 U.S. states that have them. Right to work laws allow employees to decide for themselves whether to join or financially support a union. Former Michigan Congressman David Bonior told a union event in Denver on Monday that limiting right to work laws is essential both to lifting union membership and promoting more Democratic political victories. He pointed out that John Kerry didn't win a single right to work state in 2004, while Al Gore won only one -- Iowa -- and only by a few thousand votes in 2000.

This point is crucial to understanding labor's new Democratic clout. States with more union households tend to be more Democratic. And groups like the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO will pour hundreds of millions of dollars, and endless man hours, into getting Democrats elected this year. Those resources have simply overwhelmed the 1990s New Democrat movement that tried to tug the party toward freer trade and public-sector reform.

*  *  * 

We have long believed that if workers want to form a union, they have every right to do so. And businesses that get a union often deserve what they get. What Americans need to know this November is that the Democratic Party wants to make it that much more difficult for them NOT to join a union.

We're sure there will be no shortage of commentary on the Employee Free Choice Act coming out of Denver this week.  In the meantime, here are a few items from around the web.

In The Tennessean, NFIB State Director Jim Brown recently criticized the Act and the effects it is certain to have on small business:

Small businesses would be especially vulnerable to card check. In fiscal year 2005, 70 percent of elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board involved bargaining units of 50 employees or fewer.

Even very small businesses would be vulnerable: More than 20 percent of NLRB-supervised elections involved bargaining units of 10 employees or fewer.

I recently asked one small-business owner with 24 employees what he would do if a union obtained the necessary 12 card-check signatures. "Shut down shortly thereafter," he said.

In WSJ Online, Bernie Marcus proclaimed the "Bad Labor Law is a Path to Economic Ruin," adding:

To my astonishment, most CEOs in America are unaware of this planned hostile takeover of their human resources. I am retired, so this is not business for me. It's strictly personal. I care deeply about the competitiveness of American companies and our system of free enterprise.

I know that labor-union contributions are the lifeblood of many in the House and Senate. But I just cannot understand how so many in Congress are willing to sell out America for political dollars. When the bill came up for a key vote in 2007, all Senate Democrats voted yes and only two Democrats in the House had the courage to vote no. While the bill passed the House, it failed in the Senate because the Democrats were unable to get the required 60 votes to stop a Republican filibuster.

If the Democrats have a good November, the measure could become law early next year. Bill co-sponsor Barack Obama has said: "We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. We may have to wait for the next president to sign it, but we will get this thing done."

The CongressNow publication of Roll Call notes organized labor's naked power grab:

[Change To Win official Chris ]Chafe said this could be a “watershed election” that puts Democrats in a position to move the labor agenda forward. Unions would push other labor bills if Obama is elected, including several anti-discrimination bills, paid leave legislation and more stringent Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, particularly involving ergonomics.

“We don’t need tweaks around the edges,” Chafe said of labor’s broad legislative agenda.

A Senate GOP aide said that if Democrats are able to capture 60 Senate seats, or close to that, “big labor will just run the table” on all of its priorities.

We don't know much about Tom Fox.  Based on his neat corner of the blogosphere, he seems like a pretty interesting, bright guy with diverse interests.  To the extent one can glean his political leanings from his web-pages, it seems pretty reasonable to assume he is a committed Obama supporter.  Presumably, he agrees with a decent amount of the Democratic Party's current platform and its agenda heading into 2009.

But Tom Fox is not dependent on tons of campaign cash from any particular special interest group, which is why he is free to think about the E.F.C.A., and express himself thusly:

From what I’ve read this morning here on Daily Kos[ Big Business Goes After Unions to Defeat Democrats ], which is everything I have read about the Employee Free Choice Act, it looks to me that the proposed legislation is not about fairness in the union certification process, it is about shifting the advantage to labor organizations.

If, for example, the problem is “Anti-union managers are free to campaign to every employee, every day, throughout the day; but pro-union employees can campaign only on break time,” a fairness-based solution might be to prohibit anti-union managers from campaigning throughout the work day.

Or, if “management can post anti-union propaganda on bulletin boards and walls — while prohibiting pro-union employees from doing the same,” then the law might be changed either to prohibit anti-union propaganda on bulletin boards and walls, or to allow pro-union propaganda in an equal amount and location.

Or, if the problem is that “employers can force workers to attend mass anti-union propaganda events [but] pro-union employees [are] not given equal time,” then union organizers could be given equal time by law.

There is a huge disconnect between these specific given examples of unfairness during the election campaign process and the proposed solution, which is to eliminate the election campaign process altogether rather than to fix it.

If the present process is unfair, and it does look to be that way from what little I know, then the Employee Free Choice Act seems equally unfair, but on the opposite side. This does nothing to eliminate unfairness. It is simply a re-allocation of power by means of a political/legislative agenda.

Does me being “pro-fairness” mean that I am thereby being “anti-labor”?

Brilliantly questioned, Tom.  Would that there were more voices sought to contribute rationally to the debate....

With the overnight announcement that Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) will be Senator Barack Obama's (D-IL) running mate, we took a look back at Senator Biden's past support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Senator Biden was a co-sponsor of the bill in the 110th Congress and 109th Congress, and voted in favor of cloture in 2007.

At the AFL-CIO Forum held in Chicago last year, he made no mention of the EFCA specifically, but did take numerous sharp swipes at Senator Obama suggesting inexperience and lack of foreign policy awareness -- once, embarassingly in response to a mine safety question by a Sago mine widow:

While campaigning for the nomination himself last year, Senator Biden attempted to speak in favor of the bill, but ironically made the argument against it:

“‘If the most cherished right a country can give a citizen is the ability to vote … all you got to do is walk in and sign your name and be registered to vote … Why should it be any different to organize a union?”

Of course, it isn't any different -- under current law.  Right now, only thirty percent of the employees in a workplace simply need to "sign [their] name[s]" on authorization cards for presentation to the National Labor Relations Board. Then they get a secret ballot election, run by the government, where everyone affected -- not just those who "registered" -- get "the cherished...ability to vote" to determine the issue.  That, of course, is the very right that EFCA seeks to take away from up to 50% of the workforce.

During the cloture debate in June 2007, Biden spoke enthusiastically in favor of the Act and more:

The Employee Free Choice Act will make the will of the majority of workers clearer. It will punish employers who break the law, and it will guarantee that new unions will get their first contract, not just another runaround.

It is time to bring the strength of the union movement back within the reach of the American people. It is time to rebuild the middle class by giving organized labor the strength to fight for decent pay and benefits.   

My colleagues, it is time for a new social compact, a new social compact because of white-collar workers who never thought they needed a union, and who all of a sudden are finding out their companies are not so generous with them when they walk in and shut down a division and shut them out. I say to my colleagues, I believe American white-collar workers who never thought about the union movement are prepared to think about it now.   

I don't want to just reverse the slide of organized labor in America, I want to energize a new compact between white-collar workers and blue-collar workers to give back power to the middle class so this graph you see here from the year 2008 through 2020 looks more like this graph that existed from to 1973. It is the only way to keep the middle class in the game. They are getting crushed now. They are getting crushed.

So, the ticket seems to be in agreement...

The Associated Press reports that dozens of union protesters showed up in Portland, Maine yesterday to protest the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's bus tour underway to bring attention to the Employee Free Choice Act.  Based on press accounts of the event, it may be clear now why EFCA proponents oppose free speech on the issue of unionization.  This WGME news report reveals three arguments in furtherance of the EFCA supporters' position:

1. The ubiquitous "Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! [insert here] has got to go" chant.
2. A postal worker who explains that he has a union and his job still stinks.
3. A mute, grinning doofus who proceeded to topple over the tables the Chamber set up to distribute literature.

Not a terribly impressive policy argument in favor of EFCA.

Frankly, Tom Allen, Democratic candidate for Senate did not fare much better in his attempt to justify his support of the bill.  Unfortunately, the Associated Press re-printed his party-line comments whole, without challenging him on the facts.  Mr. Allen's basic reiteration of the AFL-CIO talking points reveal the uphill battle faced by those interested in a serious policy discussion on labor law reform, divorced from the influence of overbearing special interests:

Allen said the bill "does not eliminate a secret ballot but simply creates an alternative procedure for working people to organize for better benefits and pay.

This is a canard being peddled right now by EFCA supporters that is recognized as nonsense by anyone who has had any passing experience with a labor organizing effort in the United States.  No, the EFCA does not require the striking of the secret ballot procedure language from the NLRA.  It only totally eliminates the secret ballot for all workers when a union is able to collect cards from at least 50 percent of a workforce.  Ostensibly a union or group of employees could still file for an election when they've collected cards from 30 to 49 percent of the workforce -- but they won't.  It will never actually happen -- in part, because the union will control the cards, not the employees.  Moreover, right now, they only need cards from 30 percent to get an election scheduled, and organizers still rarely file with cards from fewer than 65-75 percent of the proposed unit.  Some may reasonably find UnionFacts.org political in its own right, but Justin Wilson's blog post "The 30-50 Myth" does a fantastic job of documenting the numerous labor unions who have admitted the foregoing as a matter of internal policy. 

Moreover, while EFCA supporters are quick to cry "liar" when an EFCA opponent claims the law would "eliminate the secret ballot," in Minnesota this week, an administrative law judge threw out a complaint against the EFAC ads running in the state.  The ALJ found that the ad's claims that Al Franken sought to "elminate the secret ballot" are not false.  The decision is available after a press release at the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace website, here.

Under the current laws, the employers decide when and if an election can be held.

That claim should make one wonder if Mr. Allen has ever actually read the National Labor Relations Act, or observed the processing of a National Labor Relations Board representation petition.  Any employer who has ever received a Decision and Direction of Election from a Board Regional Director, setting the time, date and location for an election, would be surprised to learn that he did not have to abide by it, but instead could decide for himself when an election would be held.

They often delay those elections for years and in many cases the election is never held at all."

According to the Board General Counsel's Summary of Operations for Fiscal Year 2006, the typical organizing election took place 39 days after union organizers filed the election petition. Over 94 percent of organizing elections took place within eight weeks after organizers filed the a petition.  Once again, facts get in the way of a good argument.

Which begs the question:  When will we actually hear a good argument on behalf of this legislation as currently written?

Hat tip: NAM's Shopfloor.org

Months after the release of the earliest “Johnny Sack” spot, and weeks after the Employee Freedom Action Center launched its state-by-state advertising efforts, today’s New York Times reports on the increased intensity the efforts are causing in various Senate races.

The efforts underway in Maine include this ad:

Per the Times:

“We have a very simple strategy,” said Mike Murphy, media adviser to the group behind the advertisement in Maine and one in Minnesota about the vote on a measure to make it easier to unionize American workplaces. “Let’s make it famous. It is a bad law.”

Once again, the Times’ writers did a finer job accurately and objectively reporting the facts than the Times’ Op-Ed board often does when it expresses its support for the bill. The Employee Freedom Action Center is now running television, radio and print advertising in at least eight states: Maine, Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Oregon — as the Times notes, “all states where there are closely watched Senate races.”

Moreover, the Times reports:

Democrats and labor are trying to counter the advertising with Web-based campaigns painting the two groups as proxies for big business, retailers and restaurant operators who want to block workers from unionizing, but no comparable counteradvertising has been initiated.

It appears we should expect nothing less than both sides digging their heels in deeper on their positions as the election campaign season swings into full gear.

BNA's Daily Labor Report (subscription) reports that delegates to the UFCW convention are in the process of adopting numerous constitutional amendments to implement a "unity agenda" -- a plan to centralize more power in the hands of the International Union for the purpose of greatly increasing its membership. In fact, UFCW President Joe Hansen has proclaimed that the agenda will take the Union's membership roles -- currently at 1.3 million members -- to 3 million members within the next decade.

As per BNA:

"The UFCW is not, and cannot be a collection of disjointed local unions," [Hansen] said. "Every local union has a stake in the success of every other local union. Every member has a vested interest in the contracts of every other member, and every worker in our industries has an important investment in the well-being of every other worker. We must have a program that unites us together, that combines our resources, that has a strategic plan to guarantee that we coordinate our actions and build our strength. That is the one union, one voice program."

As part of this agenda, the convention delegates have identified as UFCW's core industries: retail food, other retail, food processing, and manufacturing. Additional resolutions have been adopted to increase the percentage of revenue it is currently spending on organizing from 50 to 66 percent, and directing locals to increase budget lines dedicated to organizing. A resolution to raise individual members’ dues as much as $3.00 per month over the next few years is also likely to pass.

Recent commentary in new and traditional media alike includes:

Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden dedicate their consulting practice to helping "organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce" -- hardly an anti-worker focus, to say the least. Their Contented Cows blog this weekend featured their take on EFCA and a recent AJC piece:

As one who for thirty years has been more than a casual student of employee relations, I can attest with some certainty that there is nothing about this bill that is good for American business or its employees. Moreover, as with many of the other labels (e.g., conservative, liberal, values voter) that seem to float unchallenged through our conversation these days, I am totally and completely perplexed by the name of this bill. How in the world can something that actually reduces freedom and eviscerates a scrupulously fair process be known as “employee free choice?”

Columnist Carl Strock's piece in the Schenectady (NY) Daily Gazette recognizes why legislation as poorly policy-based as EFCA enjoyed majority support in this year's Congress:

Who would possibly support such a bill? That’s easy too: Democrats, by and large, including Barack Obama on the national stage, and the various Democratic candidates for Congress on the local stage – Paul Tonko, Phil Steck, and Tracey Brooks, as well as current Congresswoman, Kirsten Gillibrand.

Why? Because the big unions want them too, that’s all. It would increase their power. Big unions are as fundamental to the Democratic voting base as oil companies and born-again Christians are to the Republican voting base, and when they say dance, Democratic candidates know enough to dance.

At the American Thinker, Geoffrey P. Hunt takes that thought further:

This legislation invites and virtually guarantees union representation in which a simple card check process, intimidating to workers, denying them a secret ballot vote, and kept secret from employers, once reaching 50% plus one would force an employer to recognize the union with no recourse. Furthermore, HR 800 would give the parties only three months to negotiate; if at impasse after 90 days an arbitrator would hand down the provisions--wages, benefits, working conditions, management rights-- in which the employer would have no right of appeal, and anti-union workers would have no ability to mobilize for a decertification petition.

Certainly before the 2010 midterm Congressional elections, the union ranks would swell by the hundreds of thousands if not millions. And what would be the consequences in addition to more entrenched socialist labor party Democrats easily winning re-election? Higher costs to consumers, companies less globally competitive and more jobs shipped to China. And higher taxes for those who remain to fund more unemployment benefits, free health care, and abstract environmental regulations having little tangible benefit to anyone.

And additional editorials appear in the Harrisonburg (VA) Daily News-Record, the Treasure Coast (FL) Palm, and the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a follow-up piece about recent allegations by organized labor groups that Wal-Mart has inappropriately been talking to its employees about workplace legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act.  Whether or not Wal-Mart has done anything wrong will utlimately be determined by the appropriate authorities.  In the meantime, however, we noted this interesting portion of the story about the alleged recorded comments of one HR manager:

In the hour-and-a-half meeting, held for managers in a Southern state, the leader tells employees that their wages may be reduced to minimum wage for up to three months before a contract is negotiated, that union authorization cards violate workers' right to privacy by including their Social Security numbers on them and that if a small unit within a store votes to unionize, the entire store will be unionized.

"If you have 10 associates in a photo lab and six sign union authorization cars, now the store is unionized," the meeting leader told employees. "Six people can make a decision for 350 people," which is about the average number of workers in a Walmart supercenter.

Of course, none of that is remotely correct.  One lesson to be learned here is that if an employer is going to put the time and effort into addressing particular legal issues, make sure that management is properly educated and trained on those issues.  Otherwise, one runs the risk of committing labor law violations by making statements like these.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a bad enough policy proposal as it is -- without adding the hyperbole and outright mischaracterizations quoted above.

More at WSJ's law blog, here.

With organized labor and its allies poised to spend a billion dollars during this election cycle in an effort to get pro-union legislation passed, it is a safe bet that employers will be faced with additional political activity by employees.  When such activities take place on the employees' own time, without impacting work performance, they are generally off-limits to employers.  But what may an employer do to address political activism that  violates otherwise legitimate, neutral work-rules? 

On July 22, 2008, the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued an Advice Memorandum setting forth the framework the Board will use to analyze and prosecute charges involving discipline of employees who engage in political advocacy and activism.  Memorandum GC 08-10 notes at the outset:

The important question of where, and on what basis, to draw the line between protected concerted activity and unprotected political activity can be a difficult one.

Board and Supreme Court precedent make clear that the National Labor Relations Act's definition of protected activity -- including activity for "mutual aid or protection" of fellow employees -- is broad enough to cover various forms of political activism.  Lobbying members of Congress, appeals to governmental agencies, and distributing literature regarding work-related political issues have all been held to be "protected" activities as long as they pertain to working conditions.  Purely political activity divorced of reference to particular work-related issues, on the other hand, is generally not protected by Section 7 of the Act.

Click to read more ...

Another installment of our semi-regular peek around the blogosphere for commentary on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)....

The National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) blog, Shopfloor.org, takes to task a recent Bangor Daily News editorial by the head of Maine's AFL-CIO in "More Deflection -- That's the Nice Term -- On Card Check."  NAM's astute blogger in chief, Carter Wood, observes of union politicking against EFCA opponents:

There’s another response, too: Name calling. The AFL-CIO is fond of “sleaze propagandist” as a term of opprobrium; the gentlest attack is “anti-worker.”

If abuse is the typical response to criticism, it seems like individual employees might have good reason to fear a negative reaction if a union organizer presented a signature card and said, “Sign this. You want to join the union, don’t you? DON’T YOU?”

In today's Washington Times, political correspondent Donald Lambro reviews the presidential candidates' positions (Obama, for; McCain against) on the legislation.  He doesn't seem to buy the sophistry of the Obama campaign asserting that EFCA is merely about "process":

But Mr. Obama, a lawyer, flatly says the bill "will allow workers to form a union through majority sign-up and card checks" - bypassing the ballot process. Union leaders have said they prefer this to an election in which employers and unions compete for worker votes.

A national survey of 1,000 registered voters conducted by the Chamber in June found 83 percent were either strongly or somewhat opposed to a system where union organizers "would know which workers voted to join a union and which did not."

The ContraCosta Times ran an editorial today pleading with legislators to "Kill [this] Unfair Labor Bill."

Finally, Paul Levy's Running a Hospital blog, Betsy Newmark's Betsy's Page, and DarwinCatholic blog all expound upon former Senator George McGovern's recent WSJ editorial criticizing the Democratic majority's zeal to pass EFCA.

An Op-Ed in today's Wall Street Journal penned by former Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern:

Voting is an immense privilege.

That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.

The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.

Read the whole piece here.

Some items from around the blogosphere:

- "A Fight Republicans Cannot Afford to Lose" by Lorie Byrd at TownHall

- "Heroes and Villains: Senatorial Candidates Edition" at Look Around HR

- "Further comments on the EFCA" at PolitickerME

- "Doublethink: When Tyranny is Freedom and Freedom is Tyranny" at Eye On Albequerque

And, of course, there seems to be no shortage of online outrage at Wal-Mart's audacity talking to their employees about important legislative issues that might impact their workplace experience.

From today's Situation Room on CNN:

OBAMA: The problem is, we have had the most anti-administration -- anti-union administration in memory under George Bush, although a lot of the problems started before Bush, you know, with the PATCO strike and dating back to the 1980s.

So, what we have to do is figure out how can we strengthen unions and thereby give workers a little more leverage. So, there are a couple -- there are a couple things that I think we can do. Number one, I think that we should pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: That will make it easier for unions to organize, make it harder for companies to block unionization.

Number two, it's not the Department of Management. It's the Department of Labor, which means that we need to have people in the Department of Labor who believe in labor standards, who are going to enforce labor standards, who are -- we need somebody on the National Labor Relations Board that will rule when -- in favor of unions, when management is not negotiating in good faith and when they're engaging in unfair labor practices.

You know, what unions are looking for, they're not looking to drive employers away. And, in this current climate, where jobs can be moved overseas all the time, you know, workers understand that, if they're doing something that's bad for the company, that, ultimately, that could mean their jobs.

So, I think most unions are very responsible, in terms of wanting to see their employers succeed. But what they do expect is that, if a company's making billions of dollars of profits, that they will share some of those profits with the workers that made that wealth possible. That is a basic principle of American life.

The current issue of the Harvard Journal on Legislation features a piece by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and law clerk Eric S. Nguyen (Harvard Law ’09) entitled “Representation Without Intimidation: Securing Workers’ Right To Choose Under The National Labor Relations Act.”  Senator Specter, who spoke compellingly during the cloture effort earlier this year on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), makes a sober, thoughtful case in the essay for a less political, constructive approach to labor law reform.

Senator Specter criticizes both political parties for placing “overreaching rhetoric” above substance in the debate over EFCA, while at the same time agreeing that American labor law is in need of reform.  Specter calls for development of legislation that addresses “three problems that hinder the ability of employees to choose…”:

1. remedies that fail to deter abuses by both unions and employers; 
2. administrative procedures that cause delays; and
3. an ineffectual NLRB.

The essay concludes with an invitation to conduct comprehensive interviews and congressional hearings, and sets forth a number of detailed questions that he believes should be addressed in any serious reform effort.  In so doing, the Senator reflects many sentiments we have expressed here numerous times before in our coverage of the EFCA debate:

We do believe, however, that both sides should tone down the rhetoric and have an honest discussion about what it best for our country’s labor-management relations.

And:

If labor's reform efforts were focused on providing appropriate funding to the National Labor Relations Board to allow it address truly rogue employers it might find true bipartisan support and might actually accomplish something meaningful.  Instead, labor is unfortunately attempting to paint all employers as bad in a transparent effort to tilt the playing field in its own favor.  As we've said all along, the NLRB has the power to punish those few employers who refuse to abide by the law -- it just doesn't have the funding to seek extraordinary remedies very often.  There is no need to throw the right of every employee  to a secret ballot out with the bathwater.

Or:

[James Small, Acting Regional Director for Region 21’s] comments raise the question of why Congress has not called on Mr. Small or any of the dozens of non-political labor experts at the NLRB to draw from their experiences with the current system.

We will likely see what course the political winds dictate when the 111^th Congress takes its seats early next year.  In the meantime, all labor practitioners and anyone serious about considering labor law reform should read the Senator's extremely thoughtful essay in its entirety.

Regular readers of our blogs are familiar with the RICO suits filed by Wackenhut, Smithfield Foods and Cintas against various labor unions engaged in Corporate Campaigns against the companies.  The July 2008 edition of CRC’s “Labor Watch” provides an overview of these suits: “RICO Suits: Employers Fight Back Against Union Smear Campaigns.”  Kilpatrick Stockton’s Seth Borden is quoted throughout the piece:

“The formal papers in these cases all do a fantastic, detailed job of illustrating the horrors of the typical union corporate campaign,” says Borden. “The alleged racketeering activity at issue in all the cases contains common elements such as the creation of surrogate organizations to spread negative publicity about the employer, the publication of reports and cleverly disguised websites disparaging the employer, exploitation of other social, political and commercial interests adverse to the employer, filing and publicizing frivolous legal claims and many other tactics.”

For more information on Corporate Campaigns, and the related RICO litigation, read the entire article here.  

The New Hampshire Union Leader reports today that the Employee Freedom Action Committee, a non-profit 501(c)(4), and its local New Hampshire chapter, Granite Staters for Employee Freedom, plan a "full throttle effort"  to paint Gov. Jean Shaheen (D-NH) as "anti-worker" for her support of the Employee Free Choice Act. 

The group first ran this full page ad in the same paper a few days ago.  Its New Hampshire web site contends Gov. Shaheen is doing the "labor union bosses' dirty work" while Sununu "has consistently opposed efforts to strip workers of their fundamental right to a private ballot vote on the job."

Expect to see more of these "issue ads" in battleground states as organizations like the Center for Union Facts, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, continue to focus on candidates who support the card-check legislation.

Moments after the 2007 version of EFCA died by a failure to invoke cloture, supporters of the bill had fundraising links posted to target the 2008 re-election of EFCA opponents.  AFL-CIO President John Sweeney urged voters to "go to the ballot boxes in 2008, armed with the scorecard filled in by [the] vote on the Employee Free Choice Act." 

Business interests are taking that threat very seriously, focusing attention in states where Democrats could pick up enough Senate seats to come close to the 60 votes likely needed to pass the bill in 2009.  Colorado -- reported on here yesterday -- is far from the only state on that list.

Now, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace has launched a focused "public education" effort in Minnesota, purportedly intended to identify the positions of the state's Senatorial candidates:  Sen. Norm Coleman (R) and Al Franken (D).  The campaign includes the launch of a Minnesota "microsite": http://minnesota.myprivateballot.com/; and, a new video ad reprising the role of the "persuasive" card-check proponent from the organization's earlier issue ad. 

This weekend, the Denver Post provided an overview of the political efforts within Colorado to defeat the re-election of EFCA sponsor Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO).  According to the Post:

The possibility that Democrats could come close to controlling the 60 Senate seats necessary to pass the bill in 2009 has persuaded business groups and Republican allies to launch an aggressive counterattack, targeting Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota and Maine, all states where Senate seats are up for grabs.

The good news for opponents of EFCA is not necessarily that these efforts are underway, but rather that the proponents of the organized labor welfare bill do not appear to have formulated any better, more logical or honest arguments in its support.

Sen. Udall himself all but expressly acknowledges in the Post piece that this bill is less about individual workers' rights and more about political payback to institutional labor unions:

Udall said that although he's supportive of secret ballots in union elections, his vote for EFCA stems largely from the imbalance in the way that unions have been treated during the eight years of the Bush administration. National Labor Relations Board decisions have unfairly favored employers, he said, and under the current administration, instances of employer intimidation have risen.

"My whole support of this is based on the fact that the Bush administration and its policies haven't really been good for working people," said Udall, who has received more than $1 million from unions during his 10 years in Congress, according to OpenSecrets.org, more than any other sector.

"They haven't been maintaining what we as Americans all believe ought to be a relationship between labor and management that benefits both," he said.

Translation:  The Senator recongizes that individual workers deserve the protection of a secret ballot, but that doesn't leave his million-dollar donors powerful enough.

And the AFL-CIO is still peddling the same nonsensical sophistry that has lead to the EFCA's repeated defeat:

"Of course, employers are not happy about it," Ackerman said of the legislation. "Of course, employers are going to call it undemocratic.

"But, in fact, if people want to be members of the Republican Party, they don't have to have a secret-ballot election. If folks want to join a church or be a member of a Boys Club, they don't have to have a secret election," she said.

And Ms. Ackerman knows full well that similarly anyone that wants to be a "member" of a labor union doesn't have to have a secret election.  Any individual right now has the right to join any organization -- the Republican Party, a labor union, or a Boys Club.  Membership is not at all what EFCA is about.  EFCA is about exclusive union representation -- making it easy for an organization to force itself upon all of the individual employees in a workplace without allowing all of those individual employees have an educated, protected say in the matter. 

That may be why "of course" a lot of people call it "undemocratic."