"Card check" update: Not so fast, says Obama

Since the Democrats won Congress in 2007, union "card check" has been something the Dems have pushed for. What is it? Since the 1930s, employees wishing to unionize have had the right to do so--but after voting in a secret ballot election.

This process worked well for the unions, in the 1950s, about one-third of the workforce was unionized. Now only 12 percent of American workers belong to a union. Among people employed in the private-sector, just 7 percent carry the union label.

The unions don't like the rules anymore, so they want to change them. As I've written before, labor groups have convinced the Democratic Party to initiate "card check," which will organize a workplace, sans the secret ballot, when a majority of employees sign a petition.

Supporter of card check legislation have named it, ludicrously, the Employee Free Choice Act.

Your boss could be the person asking you to sign a card check petition.

Barack Obama has been a card check supporter for years. But now he's not so sure. Yesterday the president-elect visited the editorial board of the Washington Post, and the subject of card check came up:

On the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to organize by obtaining a majority of signatures from employees in a workplace rather than having to win secret-ballot elections, Mr. Obama signaled willingness to consider other mechanisms to address the concern that employers unfairly use the current process to intimidate workers not to join unions. And he seemed in no hurry to have Congress bring it up. "If we're losing half a million jobs a month, then there are no jobs to unionize, so my focus first is on those key economic priority items," Mr. Obama said, declining to state whether he wanted to see the issue debated during his first year in office.

Unions, which agressively supported Obama and thought they could extract the card check pound-of-flesh from him, are probably furious.

If they are going to survive in the private sector, unions need to adapt to survive. It's not the 1950s anymore.

And card check is anti-democratic. (Small "d" democratic of course.)

For more on card check, visit the Workforce Fairness Institute site. I met a couple of guys from there at Civic Fest in Minneapolis after I picked up my media credentials for the Republican National Convention.

Related post:

Blagojevich and union "card check"

Technorati tags: labor democrats politics unions business card check Obama Barack Obama