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Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress made their Big Lie into a bill Wednesday, when Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Mike Enzi (Wyo.) introduced the so-called Secret Ballot Protection Act.
Before we go further, let’s clear up the bill’s false implication right now:
The Employee Free Choice Act would not—repeat after me—would not, take away the secret ballot National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process if workers seeking to form a union wanted to use it. The Employee Free Choice would ensure workers made the decision of whether to select a union via majority sign-up (card-check) or via ballot process. Choice is good. That’s one reason why we called it Employee Free Choice—because it would enable employees, not management, to make the decision of how to form a union.
The official goal of S. 1312 is to:
amend the National Labor Relations Act to ensure the right of employees to a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.
But the real objective of the DeMint-Enzi—and, of course, the autoworker-hating senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker—crowd is to force senators to be on record in support of it before the Employee Free Choice Act is up for a vote and to get free PR for their lies.
In announcing the bill, DeMint put out this gem:
‘Card check’ is completely unacceptable and un-American, and we must pass the Secret Ballot Protection Act to safeguard workers’ rights for good.
Since Enzi brought up “un-American,” let’s take a look at that term. Seems actions like providing health care for low-income children, ensuring America’s workers are paid overtime and have a safe workplace where they are not paid less because of their gender or race are all-American standards. But not so for DeMint. A quick look at his Senate voting record shows:
- DeMint voted at least seven times against expanding health care for children (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program).
- DeMint voted three times against protecting overtime pay for millions of workers.
- DeMint opposed workplace safety standards.
- DeMint voted against Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps ensure workers are not paid less because of gender or race.
The same day the Big Lie bill was introduced, 39 economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, issued a statement supporting the Employee Free Choice Act as key to getting our nation’s economy back on its feet. Their statement says in part:
Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000—an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.
Yet as Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work, says:
At a time when more Americans are hurting financially than perhaps at any other time in our history, a small group of consistently anti-worker members of Congress are introducing legislation to make it harder for workers to negotiate for better pay and health care for themselves and their families. It is unconscionable that these Congressmen with six-figure salaries and guaranteed pensions choose to kick America’s workers when they are down. This ploy is no surprise, as they have voted against raising the minimum wage, expanding children’s health insurance and ensuring worker safety.
Here’s another lie the bill’s sponsors are pushing out, this via Think Progress:
DeMint took to Fox News to describe why he thinks his firewall is necessary. Amidst the usual false rhetoric about Employee Free Choice eliminating the secret ballot, DeMint also incorrectly claimed that the act would harm small businesses:
And this is not just for big auto companies, this is for small electrical contractors, companies with 10 or 15 people. It would change the business model of the United States to the same model the U.S. auto industry has in Detroit.
As Think Progress points out, DeMint has this all wrong. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) excludes non-retail employers whose interstate commerce is less than $50,000 and retail employers whose gross annual volume is less than $500,000; there are various other size exemptions for all sorts of industries, from newspapers to taxicab companies. These exemptions would not change under the Employee Free Choice Act.
The list of the Big Lie’s bill co-sponsors (all Republicans) reads like a who’s who of senators who will meet the wrath of working families in coming elections: Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), Sam Brownback (Kan.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Jim Bunning (Ky.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Cornyn (Texas), Bob Corker (Tenn.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), John McCain (Ariz.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.), Roger Wicker (Miss.) and David Vitter (La.).
Because this group doesn’t have enough votes to get the bill anywhere, it’s all about making noise. And spreading the Big Lie.
15 Comments
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Republican Senators lying to the American people? Why I’m shocked shocked I say that they would lie to me and the rest of the public.
Not.
Why is it that the minority Rethug Senators are able to ‘introduce’ a bill like this?
I seem to remember when the Dems were in the very much minority and they were not able to introduce anything, except maybe naming a post office or something.
The rules and procedures in the Senate are so arcane I wonder if there is actually anyone there who actually understands them and can explain them in simple terms to the American Public.
Tula,
What about a proposal that would continue to require ballots, but also did the following:
1. The polling place would be a neutral site, not the workplace.
2. The polling would take place immediately (within 3 working days)
after certification.
Personally, I think the EFCA is right. Let the workers decide if they are signing up for an election or going straight to union. But the anti-unionists make a horribly big deal about no election. Of course, I know that what they want with an election is the time to bring in the bullies to beat workers out of the idea of having a union. But if they haven’t the time to organize their bullying, could they have their precious election?
Newt piled Big Lie upon Big Lie and ended up getting the Republics control of Congress. I hope current Democrats won’t just ignore things hoping they will just go away. Even if a bill has no chance, a direct response is required.
loky,
Introducing a bill is one thing. Even when the ‘tards controlled things the D’s could introduce bills. Procedurally, when someone introduces something you don’t like you assign it a committee for hearing. Then you have a word or two with the committee chair, to ensure that the bill is assigned a priority just slightly lower than flossing the cat’s teeth. If you have a committee chair who absolutely despises the idea in the bill, or the bill’s sponsor (or best of all possible worlds, despises both), so much the better.
Democratic Leadership is an oxymoron until the morons are ‘primaried’
OT Issa vs Franks on Tweety. Tweety jumped out Issa for saying democrat party. Franks jumped to defense of what he called the republicanistas. Funny exchange.
The way I understand the current law is that the employer has to ‘give permission’ for the election – and they also get to set the date.
Of course, in a lot of cases that permission was simply denied. And setting the date of the election months down the road and then doing everything from threats and intimidation to actually shutting the business down and moving to another town happened in the interim.
EFCA takes this away from the employers. The card-check allows for the organizing union to set the date, if the workers actually want to have election they can. But the workers have all the choices under EFCA. That’s why the anti-worker Rethugs and their business cronies hate it so much.
and born again deficit haters. wow. good tv.
issa lying his face off.
Thank you. Card check is one practical way for workers to vote for a union. The secret ballot, an equally available choice under the EFCA, is another. This is another front on the war against labor and the middle class. It has nothing whatever to do with the mythology or aspirations of America. It has everything to do with employers wanting no fetters on how they hire, fire and pay their workers.
Actually, it’s not a matter of the employer giving permission. That is guaranteed by card-check system. If enough workers sign cards, the election must be held.
But under the current system, management gets to set the date (well in the future) and the place (somewhere they control) for the election. This is used to provide them time and space for antiunion activities.
Making people understand that is difficult, and the lie about ‘eliminating secret ballot elections’ gains a lot of traction. I’m okay with a compromise. Sure, let’s have elections. But they have to be held quickly after cards are certified, and not held in a place controlled by management. So, no time for them to engage in anti-union activities, and not in a space where they can keep goons around to make sure people vote the ‘right’ way.
Only incompetence by Harry Reid could give this move any gas at all. The proposed bill can be bottled up in committee, and the committee chair can arrange that the EFCA has to be considered first.
The Democrats control the floor, and they control the committees. The Republicans can use filibusters to stop things, but they have no power to start things.
Actually, in every parliamentary procedure there are lots of ways to kill things. If you control the agenda and committee assignments of legislation, simply assigning proposals to the ‘right’ committee can determine their fate. If I were Harry Reid, I’d make sure this bill was heard in a committee whose chair is solid union supporter. That will be sufficient to kill it.
If you (or your allies) don’t control the agenda and committee assignments, you can control the debate, insert poison pills by amendment, filibuster (if the rules allow), etc.
Getting things through parliamentary processes is much harder than killing them.
Employee free choice act and health care will be the two largest fights in washington we will see in our life time.
Although the EFCA is not that detrimental law to businesses. It is a significant signal flare of what is to come.
Jim DeMint (sounds French) is an idiot of colossal proportions, a buffoon of the right, a clown to entertain his masters, a disgrace to South Carolina (along with Miss Graham), an excrescence on the body politic, an impediment to progress of any kind, a thug urinating on anything that another might hold dear, a one-man shitstorm, a churchical hypocrite, and just basically an asshole.
There, I’ve said it. I have to live here.