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Card check issue stalls panel’s vote on nominee
Republicans want to know how Solis stands on bill they oppose, unions want badly
Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Washington — President Barack Obama’s nominee for Labor secretary is running into fierce resistance from Republicans over her reluctance to state her views clearly on legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize.
The nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis has yet to be approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — even though her confirmation hearing two weeks ago was among the first for Obama’s cabinet picks.
The committee, chaired by Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, could not say Thursday when it would hold a vote.
Even if the committee approves Solis, her nomination could be blocked by a Republican senator on the floor.
The committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, has been pressing for more detailed responses to questions posed on several issues, including the Employee Free Choice Act or card check bill.
The legislation would allow workers to organize simply by handing in enough cards expressing their preference. Under card check, union membership rose steadily in the past century until 1947, when Congress, under pressure from business, began requiring secret ballot elections. Unions claim the election campaigns allow management to dissuade workers with threats. Businesses argue that card check allows unions to pressure workers unduly to organize.
When asked Thursday whether he was satisfied with the answers Solis has given, Enzi said: “What answers?”
“She doesn’t even recognize her own record when giving the answers,” Enzi said. “Right now there are people who don’t want her out of committee. It’s not just me.”
Enzi said that while senators traditionally confirm a president’s nominations, “there’s also the obligation to really get it down on paper what their beliefs are.”
Solis has a strong reputation as a friend of labor — her father was a Teamster, and as a congresswoman, she marched on the picket line during a high-profile grocery-store picket line in her Southern California congressional district.
She voted for the Employee Free Choice Act in the House in 2007. The bill later died in the Senate but is being resurrected in this Congress.
The business community has targeted defeat of the bill among its top goals this year, engaging in a multi-million dollar campaign against it. A full-page ad in Thursday’s Politico portrays congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as ignoring what opponents call the union “power grab.”
The bill’s progress is being watched on The Strip as it would enable workers at the remaining nonunion casino properties in Las Vegas to more easily join unions.
At Solis’ confirmation hearing two weeks ago, she repeatedly dodged questions about the bill, saying she could not express her opinion on it because she and Obama had not yet discussed the issue.
At the time, Solis’ responses seemed strategic — a way to avoid giving fodder on a hot-button issue to those who may oppose her nomination.
Enzi said he hoped the nominee would talk with the president about the bill, “get an answer, give us an answer.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Discussion: 34 comments so far…
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Card checks are tactics of intimidation used by outdated organizations to force their will on unwilling employees. Enough already - unions needs less power, not more.
This is needed because companies utilize dirty tactics, stall, intimidate etc.. If you are a company that your employees are looking to unionize you earned it...the hard way. Also, don't kid yourself. The best thing for the worker is a union. "Force employees" give me a break. Nothing our family has would have been possible without a union: healthcare, pensions, safe work envirionment, college education for our children, retirement. Don't let them kid you those companies who don't want it are rewarding the executives..in fact you maybe an executive having written such nonsense!
By RPJ
1/23/09 at 7:32 a.m.
Suggest removal Card checks are tactics of intimidation used by outdated organizations to force their will on unwilling employees. Enough already - unions needs less power, not more.
RP: You've got it backwards. Wake up, people need to be able to organize to protect themselves against employers who use every tactic under the sun to stop them from organizing. The will of employees should be heard without intimidation, harrassment and firing of decent people because they want to organize for a better workplace or job.
As I have previously stated, great, this is what we need more union slugs sucking off the tit of society and getting paid to do nothing. Losers.
There is nothing more socialist in our society than the unions as they are currently organized. The UAW is a prime example.
If they really want card-check, why not see how many members of Culinary are US citizens or have (legitimate) green cards?
As more companies fire of employees, and as the US work force finds out about the abuse of company monies. More employees will find that being in a union is the correct way to go. For the people that think Unions are socialism, remember your weekends off, 8 hour work days, healthcare, pay increases, and whistle blowers these are but just a few of things that unions brought to every working American.
Unions have almost no power anymore. It is time to give them a chance and eliminate corporate intimidation practices which is the main reason unions have so little power now. Why is everyone for the bullies and the anti-American internationalist corporations.
If unions bring better working conditions to employees does it matter if they have some socialist tendencies.
The GOP and their mindless minions who vote against their own economic interests have had their way for the last 30 years since Ronald Reagan attacked labor and practiced trickle-up economics.
Well, the middle and working class people powered the Dems to victory and "elections have consequences." We won, you lost after screwing up the country, so sit your butts down and let us fix things once again.
Unions have lost their power because they have lost their credibility. UAW has to make huge concessions as part of the Detriot bailout. Why? Because they are largely responsible for the impossible cost structure that GM etc are forced to support. Business is competitive, non-union business provides competitive salary and benefits as unionized ones, because they want to recruit and keep top talent. Unions create a crutch for poor performers to keep their jobs. They charge workers extraordinary dues to produce nothing in return except huge pay increases for the union bosses. Unions have outlived their usefulness.
Rep. Hilda Solis as an unabashed union supporter [not a business supporter] should not be embarrassed to state her position.
But what she needs to address is what law language she will add that will prevent card checks tactics of intimidation by union enforcers, to force union bosses will on unwilling employees.
Basically the Union will always choose check card process. A group of say 15% of the workers should be able to appeal directly to the labor board to call for a secret ballot.
All I know is this. I was once anti-union until I got a job at a community college with union representation. We are not forced to be in the union and can easily opt out. I know colleagues who have opted out and the union leaves them alone and still represents them.
A few years after getting my job I had some disagreements with the administration and I was severely harassed by that administration. If not for the union I would have lost my job. Also, if not for the union, I would not have been paid well enough to buy a house and receive top medical care and remain a member of the U.S. middle class. The great thing about unions is that they move working class people into the middle class. It's a great instrument of upward mobility. I see nothing wrong for being paid a decent wage for working very hard. As unions have been demeaned and destroyed by the greed that has consumed this country for the last 40 years or so under mostly Republican administrations, income disparities have increased and the middle class has been reduced. Too many do not understand this.
I can only thank my union for my job and for my good salary and for my good health benefits that I would not have without being a union member. And because I have these things, I love my job and want to work hard and help all of my students advance and be successful. Go unions go!!!
Sometimes I feel that the members of the workforce who are anti-union are just jealous because they don't get the benefits that union members get and just want to pull union members down to their levels of weak salaries and benefits.
Generally, union bashers have never worked in a union shop. Their frame of reference is conceived from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. Let's give the people who actually produce something, rather than just paper, their due respect. Let's have labor and management exchange positions and duties for a week, then see where their opinions come down. We'll even keep the same wages.
Unions haven't lost power because of credibility, they have been under attack for 40 years, though they have shot themselves in the feet many times. The Right has been funded by fiercely anti-union billionaires and support the GOP to further their own pro-business goals.
I would highly recommend that people do an internet search for an essay called "A Day in the Life of Joe Conservative." There are too many people who vote against their own interests and fall prey to fear and easy manipulation to allow us to be divided and conquered to the benefit of rich people who have gotten fat on our labor. There has been class warfare alright, a war against the middle and working classes.
Our representatives work for US, not the other way around. WE are the government, it's not some kind of alien life form. The Right has convinced WAY too many people to treat government like some kind of evil when it is actually made up of us and our neighbors if we take the time to get involved.
Poster Fred Flintstone has the gall to blame the UAW for GM's failure. Therefore, it's the UAW who must reduce it's wage and benefits. And we are to assume that while the big three were flying high since the 1930's, it's now labor's fault that they struggle to compete with the rest of the industry. This is interesting in that the UAW will build any car management directs them to, but it's not really up to them to design and market a vehicle that appeals to people. Seems to me, these are more likely the responsible parties.
"We are not forced to be in the union and can easily opt out."
That was under the law today so why do we need to change.
Rep. Hilda Solis as an unabashed union supporter should not be embarrassed to state her position on card check.
What are Unions doing for the country
Despite a 11% wage increase offer, in a down economy, Machinist Union District Lodge 751 went on strike Sept 7, 2008, after they were just on strike in 2005 for a month. Boeing lost millions of dollars in sales and will have to outsource more fabrication. The Union put excessive price pressure on a product that can be made internationally by others is not good business.
Why have GM and Ford negotiated early retirement buyouts, hiring new workers at lower second-tier wages, out-sourcing, and their Unions are taking over Defined-contribution Retirement Plans.
Why in May 2008 with car sales down, did UAW local 31 strike the GM Fairfax plant for some mysterious grievance.
UAW Local 602 struck Lansing for four weeks (May 2008) over another mysterious grievance.
These strikes and the one at American Axle and Manufacturing Holding cost GM $2 billion in the second quarter of 2007.
The AA & MH strike cost the UAW 2000 jobs with the remaining cut by over 1/2 to $30 to 45/hour.
In 2007, the Las Vegas hospitality industry, while the economy was in a downturn, gave the Unions fat raises resulting higher costs to Visitors. The Visitors are declining, as they are going to more affordable places, so now the Casinos struggling for profits are in a harsh cycle of reducing comps and laying off people, and new casino construction is falling by the wayside.
The Tropicana, which was the one Casino that is fighting the Union increase, has been driven into a bankruptcy sale by the 750 members of Culinary Union Local 226 actions and the United Here Local 54 in Atlantic City, NJ. Robert McDevitt the Unite Here head said "Were going to War"'
With the low dollar in play, Casinos are looking for foreign investment (Dubai World, Australia-based Crown Ltd., and Israel-based Elad Properties) to bail them out.
All Americans should have the right to work for less. All Americans should have the right to work for more(wages, working conditions, benefits). All Americans should have the right to choose which of these they want. Is there a level playing field for these choices? As soon as I see the first union employee in an American Wal-Mart I'll let you know.
It's really dubious future to blame the casinos' problems on the unions. First off, everyone knows that the casinos shifted over to high end and didn't look back a couple years ago.
Couple this with then high fuel costs and the general economic downturn, and that's why casinos are in trouble. It has very little to do with the unions.
Also the Trop has worse problems than the unions. Your whole hypothesis looks weak when you blame it all on the unions.
Wal-Mart is possibly the most God-less company in the United States. I've always wondered how the party of family values and Jesus Christ squares their position on putting earnings ahead of their fellow man. I'm supposing that what you do is drop a couple extra bucks in the collection plate.
We should closed those evil Wal-Mart stores.
Those dumb employees that work in them should go down the street and work at the unionized version of Wal-Mart.
Those low income families should suck it up and do with less and shop at the unionized version fo Wal-Mart.
What? There is no unionized version of Wal-Mart.
And if there was one it could not afford to hire all those Wal-Mart employees at the higher unionized wage.
Oh well.....they will just have to go back to welfare.
Yes, I suppose it would be un-Christian like to expect the Walton family owners of Wal-Mart to reduce their profit margin a little bit to provide some type of job security and benefits to their employees. Your right. Screw them Wal-Mart workers, I got mine.
It would un-Christain like for unions to require non-union workers to subidize union workers' pay and benefits via taxes and restrictive commerical laws.
Retired52,
Look man here is the deal, unions were good when we had 12 year olds in the mine and blah, blah, blah.
But like a lot of things in life they are obsolete now.
GM cannot build cars that they want, the government has to approve them, not the buyers.
As for Wal-mart, dude, if you don't like them, don't shop there. Shop at Target (french owned) or some other store, you live in America, shop were ever the heck you feel like.
I am against the Government sticky their hands in everything and even more opposed to Unions sticking their hands in everything.
I don't remember the Government bailing out the buggy whip manufacturers, technology changes everything.
Oh, and finally I know several Wal-Mart workers who are happy and have worked there for quite a while. I know that doesn't fit your theory.
Unions are outmoded and outdated ... For anyone with a sense of self reliance and determination. If they serve a purpose, any purpose, it is to redistribute the wealth of the risk takers and the doers to those self-entitled drone-mentality "workers." Nobody "needs" a union, but plenty of folks rely on them rather than relying on themselves.
IMHO, Unions give the illusion of safety and security to many. But it is still an illusion. Nobody is safe. Everyone must compete to survive. That is life. Anything else is, well, an illusion.
Follow your bliss. Stay away from false living. Ya, like Unions. Unions are a lie. No true happiness there. Following bliss is good. True happiness can be found there! And, no dues too! :)
Hey nance, you and getalife ought to get married. You'd be known as getalife nance. Being a union member I've found that the people who are against the unions are ones who are not members of one. Instead of putting the unions down why don't you two tell me something good about the industries you two bring your bread home from.
Oh here we go again, crybaby Republicans getting in the way of good change. That's Ok".as the President said"he won! Time for real change including removing the pro-business thumb that we've all suffered under for the last 3 decades. Time to revamp our labor laws to start working for labor again!
Employee Free Choice Now . Org
Educating The World on The EFCA.
Myth vs. Reality: The REALITY is the Employee Free Choice Act Helps American Workers and their Families.
Despite the need for reform, critics of EFCA continue to misinform the public about the bill and hide the serious shortcomings of current labor law. Democrats are committed to setting the record straight and passing this important legislation on behalf of American workers and their families.
MYTH: EFCA will prevent the use of secret-ballot elections.
REALITY: EFCA does not strip workers of their right to choose a secret-ballot election to decide whether to select -- or not to select -- a union representative. EFCA simply gives workers the additional option of selecting a union representative by majority sign-up.
The Employee Free Choice Act is nothing new it only reestablishes the Joy Silk Doctrine of 1949
History
In 1949, the NLRB's Joy Silk Doctrine established that "an employer could lawfully refuse to bargain with a union claiming representative status through possession of authorization cards only if he had a 'good faith doubt' as to the union's majority status.This policy was changed in 1966 with the ruling in Aaron Brothers, where "the Board made it clear that it had shifted the burden to the General Counsel to show bad faith and that an employer 'will not be held to have violated his bargaining obligation... simply because he refuses to rely upon cards. 'If passed, the proposed Employee Free Choice Act would return the NLRB policy to the Joy Silk Doctrine and allow employer challenges to card check elections only when illegal coercion or fraud is charged.
For More Information on EFCA please visit our website and blog
http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/
http://www.LaborUnionResources.Org
http://www.spfpa.org/UnionBusterPagemake...
http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/dmdo...
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1...
EFCANOW, I think you overdosed on the kool-aid. Try posting after you sober up.
What is very ironic is that the folks that would most be helped by union representation are posting so much of the ANTI-union rhetoric here. As if the card check system would be another sign of the "impending apocalypse."
Too much Rush, kids.
gmag39, dude, I absolutely and without hesitation do not need or want union representation or meddling or spying or anything in my life.
It is not the sign of the apocalypse just the end of free speech and free thought.
Oh, and as an added bonus the end of free elections, crazy huh.
getalife:
WOW.