Politico reports that House Dems are gearing up for a battle over the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee between Representatives Waxman and Dingell:

The race itself remains a tough one to call. “I’m not even sure the candidates know,” said Washington Rep. Jay Inslee, a Waxman supporter.

And most lawmakers dread picking sides.

Asked who she would be supporting, Rules Chairwoman Louise McIntosh Slaughter of New York exclaimed, “Oh, it’s a secret ballot, thank the Lord.”

But while Slaughter literally praises God for the fact that she can vote in private, she also is a cosponsor of an effort to strip workers of their access to a secret-ballot vote for unionization. Does she even notice the rank hypocrisy?

In this special episode of the National Right to Work Podcast, National Right to Work Committee and Foundation President Mark Mix tells host Stefan Gleason about the ramifications of the power-shifting election.

Vice President Stefan Gleason sits down with Foundation Staff Attorney Glenn Taubman to discuss the ugly realities of coercive card-check organizing drives and Big Labor's efforts to make this process for unionization mandatory; Listen here:

For additional background, check out this op-ed from Foundation President Mark Mix.

You can also listen to the Foundation's podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.

[Note: Firefox users have reported that the audio is distorted when using the player above. To ensure the podcast plays correctly just click here to listen.]

Big Labor is spending north of a billion dollars to get their favored candidates elected, much of it from employees forced to pay dues to keep their job. Union bosses see it as a smart investment given the forced unionism power grabs that could quickly become law if their chosen candidates take office.

As detailed in today's Wall Street Journal, those power grabs would mean literally billions new forced dues dollars flowing into union bosses' coffers.  There is no question that Foundation attorneys will be overwhelmed with legal aid requests from workers seeking refuge from the onslaught:

Big Labor is hoping to have a big election next Tuesday, with a goal of building a majority to rewrite negotiating rules between unions and management. Though it has received little media attention, Barack Obama's pro-union agenda is the most ambitious in decades and has a real prospect of becoming law. His stated goal is to "strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions" by doing the following:

- Mr. Obama is a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections. Unions would be certified to negotiate pay, benefits and work rules simply by collecting signed "union authorization cards" from a majority of employees at a work site. The law passed the House in 2007 but didn't come up for a Senate vote.

Under current law, union organizers and management both have the opportunity to present the pros and cons of forming a union. A secret employee vote is then held. Under Mr. Obama's proposal, unions would be the sole provider of information to the employee, and the worker's decision whether to organize would no longer be private.

Unions say current law favors management, which can stall to a point where workers lose interest in organizing. But the median number of days between filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and holding an election has actually fallen over the past two decades. In 2007, more than 1,500 such elections were held, and unions won 54% of them, the same win rate of the early 1970s.

- Another labor-friendly provision of the Employee Free Choice Act is mandatory arbitration. Under current law, labor and management are required to bargain in good faith but aren't obliged to reach an agreement. Under Mr. Obama's proposal, if the parties can't settle on a contract within 120 days, the dispute goes to an arbitration panel which can impose a contract that is binding for two years.

As a practical matter, contracts typically involve dozens of provisions dealing with wages as well as seniority, grievances, overtime, transfers and promotions. Rarely is this accomplished in four months. The provision would notably shift bargaining power to unions, which would have an incentive to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand.

- Mr. Obama also supports legislation to reverse the NLRB's "Kentucky River" ruling last year, which fleshed out the definition of a supervisor for the purposes of organizing. Unions usually prefer a narrow definition of management, because it increases the number of people potentially under their control. Conversely, labor has worked to expand the definition of "employee" to include everyone from temp workers to graduate-student teaching assistants.

- The Democrat also wants to bar companies from replacing striking workers -- a right that management has held for some 70 years. Unions made a similar push in the early 1990s, and a bill passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. Mr. Clinton issued an executive order that would have ended the provision for federal contractors. It was struck down in federal court. Mr. Clinton then tried to get the NLRB to make it more difficult to replace striking workers. The courts overturned that too. Mr. Obama says he will "work to ban the provision," but hasn't provided specifics.

- Mr. Obama supports the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act and has said he'd push for its enactment as president. The bill, which passed the House last year and already has 60 votes in the Senate, would force state and local governments to recognize union leaders as the exclusive bargaining agent for police, firefighters and other first responders. More than half of the states would have to change their laws. Thousands of public safety officers would no longer be able to negotiate directly with their employers on their own behalf.

Read the whole thing here.

For background on Big Labor's plans, listen to this Right to Work podcast with Greg Mourad of the National Right to Work Committee.

Here's a telling video of former union organizers describing the pressure, intimidation and even outright dishonesty that goes into collecting cards for a card check.

Today USA Today, the largest circulation newspaper in the country, editorializes against efforts to impose the coercive Card Check Instant Organizing on every worker in America:

Under the current system, once 30% of a company's workers sign union authorization cards, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administers a confidential vote, typically 39 days after it receives the cards. The union and employer campaign for votes.

Under a major rewrite of U.S. labor law being promoted by unions, when more than 50% of employees sign authorization cards, the NLRB would have to recognize the new union. No campaign. No secret ballot.

This misguided measure passed the House shortly after Democrats took the majority in 2007. But it needs several more votes in the Senate and a president who will sign it. Barack Obama supports it; John McCain does not. It's no surprise, then, that the AFL-CIO plans to spend an eye-popping $200 million this election cycle to support Obama and Democratic candidates for Congress. A win for Obama and big gains for Senate Democrats could remove the remaining obstacles to the euphemistically named "Employee Free Choice Act."

Cajoled choice is more like it. The proposed change would give unions and pro-union employees more incentive to use peer pressure, or worse, to persuade reluctant workers to sign their cards. And without elections, workers who weren't contacted by union organizers would have no say in the final outcome.

Labor leaders [sic], such as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in the space below, argue that the proposed law wouldn't prohibit private balloting. This is accurate but misleading. Union organizers would have no reason to seek an election if they had union cards signed by more than 50% of workers. And if they had less than a majority, they'd be unlikely to call for a vote they'd probably lose.

Read the whole thing here. USA Today's editorial board joins a growing chorus of voices from across the political spectrum recognizing the horrible abuses involved in "card check" organizing.  Here, for example, is former United States Senator and leftist George McGovern writing about the dangers of Card Check Instant Organizing.

You wouldn't know it from watching any of the debates, but the potential for Big Labor to ram "card check" down American workers' throats is very real and very immediate.  Accordingly, the Foundation is bracing itself for a new wave of employee requests for legal aid. Mickey Kaus, a lefty blogger reveals the rapid timeline:

Obama's Fast Labor Payoff: kf hears from a trustworthy non-Republican source (with access to actual insider information) that the Dems are getting set to pass "card check" legislation fast next year, right out of the box, assuming Obama wins and the Democrats get their expected big Senate majority. The legislation--which would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections, allowing union organizers to gather signed cards person-to-person--is cheap, in budgetary terms. And it's very, very important to organized labor.

More here.

Big Labor apologist Mark Weisbrot had a piece defending the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act in Tuesday's Chicago Sun-Times. Money quote (emphasis mine):

This law would probably change Americans' lives more than any legislation since the New Deal brought us Social Security. The political influence of millions of new union members would also bring us closer to such basic reforms as universal health care. It's all long overdue.

Of course, millions of new forced dues paying union members would only increase union bosses' influence, not the workers' influence -- nearly half of whom do not support Big Labor's political agenda.

Meanwhile, American who agrees with Big Labor's political agenda can already choose to financially (or otherwise) support union-backed candidates and causes. But union bosses, you see, know better than the average worker. The average worker isn't giving enough support to the Far Left politicians prefered by union officials on his own. So union bosses want to use dues money, seized from workers' paychecks, to finance their own political activism.

Worse, an increase in Card Check forced unionism will open the doors for rampant intimidation of workers by union goons -- so much of the increased dues money going to these politics will be from workers who were pressured into union ranks through card check.

Employees should indeed have a free choice -- to determine their own representation and to decide for themselves if they want to join a union or fund its political activism.

Two days ago, we posted an entry announcing our offer of free legal aid to Todd Palin if he wishes to stop funding ugly union attacks against his wife. It continues -- the USW's president recently unloaded on Governor Palin and her family at the union's official blog:

At the press conference, Palin trotted him out, stressing his steelworker credentials. Here’s a good union man, she emphasized.

But his United Steelworker card doesn’t include an automatic auxiliary membership for her. Or her running mate at the top of the Republican ticket...

There is a clear disconnect between unions' top bosses and rank-and-file workers. Union chief Leo Gerard -- who, according to his biography, is a Canadian citizen and whose lavish salary is paid with the forced union dues of workers like Todd Palin -- likes to berate people about who they should vote for in American elections.

Todd Palin's unfortunate quandary highlights the injustices of forced unionism. If you are a unionized worker funding political speech you abhor, contact the National Right to Work Foundation or take a close look at the employee rights section of our web site. We provide free legal assistance to workers victimized by compulsory unionism. 

The National Association of Manufacturer's 'Shopfloor' blog has post up on another oft-repeated card-check myth. The entry starts out with Big Labor's favorite rejoinder to critics of the erroneously-titled "Employee Free Choice Act" (EFCA):

The most-common misleading response from organized labor to the criticism that the Employee Free Choice Act will destroy the secret ballot in the workplace goes like…well, here’s a recent example. It comes from Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation.

. . .

"The EFCA would give workers, not employers, the right to decide how to express the choice about going union: through the card-check process OR through the NLRB election process."

McCarthy is playing the readers for idiots. Theoretically, oh sure, union organizers might, possibly, theoretically, choose an election, maybe. But under what possible circumstance would that be a realistic choice?

Well said. Once union organizers are given license to unilaterally bypass NLRB-supervised elections, there's absolutely no incentive for them to go the less-abusive secret ballot route. Union militants know that card-check drives dramatically increase their chances of warehousing employees into monopoly bargaining collectives by opening the door to intimidation and harassment.

Shopfloor also highlights the excellent congressional testimony (.pdf) of John Raudabaugh, a labor law attorney and former member of the NLRB. Here's his assesment of the EFCA (emphasis mine):

[Big] Labor claims that elevating card-check to secret ballot status does not do away with the ballot box. Their double-speak is a pathetic attempt to "change the subject." To trigger the secret ballot process and NLRB administrative involvement, 30 percent or more of the employees in an "appropriate unit" must sign a petition requesting an election. Should a union garner signatures from more than 50 percent of the unit employees, an employer can voluntarily recognize the union or not to ensure a secret ballot election. Why? To protect the employee-voter from peer pressure and third party overreaching.

[Big] Labor wants card-check with 50+ percent yield to bypass but equate to the ballot box process. Why? To effectively silence the employer by conducting a quick, one-sided campaign without counter-information from the employer. Moreover, without the ballot-box, there is effectively no cure to overreaching and false Labor promises.

[Big] Labor and its funded academics ignore Taft-Hartley specifically protecting a worker’s right to refrain from third-party representation. Were the union to come up short of 50+ percent signed cards, would it really proceed to file a petition for an election? No, the secret ballot would not remain a real option under the EFCA proposal.

And that's the bottom line. The card check bill will almost certainly result in the de facto elimination of all secret ballot protections in the workplace. Suggesting otherwise is simply dishonest.

For a more comprehensive look at the EFCA, check out this (.pdf) National Institute for Labor Relations Research study.