Beyond the card check spin

By Nicole Lucht

Friday, March 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The debate on the card check legislation making its way through Congress is giving me an opportunity to improve my rhetoric-spotting skills. Of course, not all rhetoric is a lie — a stretch, perhaps, or a great persuasive tool — and it is up to the listener or reader of the rhetoric to determine what is true or not.

I had the opportunity to spend a day at the nation’s capital earlier this month, discussing the pending legislation with people on all sides of the issue, and valid points were made by all. But there was no ducking the spin.

Now, armed with a tattered college textbook and online resources, I’ve pulled some of my favorite rhetoric from my reporter’s notebook that I chose not to use in articles I’m writing.

Let’s take a gander at some of the rhetoric I’m hearing out on the beat. To protect the not-so-innocent, I’m not telling who emitted the distortions, or as comedian Stephen Colbert calls, “truthiness,” because, really, they aren’t the only ones saying it.

Onward we go.

Let’s start with the most obvious: Unions prefer to call the card check proposal the “Employee Free Choice Act,” while business prefers “Small Business Intimidation Act.” The former is meant to appeal to workers, while the latter is meant to strike fear into employers.

• “We are going to ruin the country and everything we stand for in the way of democracy and freedom if we go in the way of stopping an employer (from preventing organization). Even now, employers can’t threaten, intimidate, promise, spy. So employers’ free speech rights are muzzled as the law currently exists.”

Fact: The country is already in an economic recession. This is the deepest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. And employers are allowed, and in fact, do, hire labor management consultants to sway their employees from organizing.

• “There are compromises to be had, but are we going to compromise with our fundamental civil liberties? Are we going to take away and rewrite the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Are we going to take away employers’ free speech rights, in the interest of what? For what greater good are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Is this a national security issue? It’s political payback.”

The majority of this is a red herring and rhetorical questioning. I do have to point out, however, that Congress does a lot of things that are not dependent on whether it is a “national security issue.”

• “Is the Employee Free Choice Act a good thing? In that it makes it easier to organize unions and therefore for average Americans to get more bargaining leverage and higher pay, it certainly is.”

This form of rhetorical question was asked by an anti-card check proponent, surprisingly.

•“(Card check) is a fundamentally broken way of a remodel, because if you look around at companies that have failed, they are union companies. The reality is that the automobile industry, the steel industry, the hard manufacturing, they were all heavily unionized and no longer competitive.”

Fact: Nonunionized businesses are also failing. Most recent example, Circuit City electronics stores, which fought off attempts to unionize, and even laid off 3,400 employees in 2007 to hire new employees at lower wages. In the past, industries hit by recessions, such as the airline industry, have gone bankrupt, including anti-union Delta Air Lines.

• “Card check will restore workers’ ability to unionize and collectively bargain for a better life.”

Workers already have the right to form unions and bargain on a contract. However, they cannot organize during work hours, only during breaks or before or after work hours. Employers can hold mandatory meetings during work hours where employees are consulted by labor management consultants (union busters).

On a side note (and a clever piece of rhetoric at that), the AFL-CIO recently instituted an award named the “Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Bizarre Corporate Panic Over Workers’ Rights Award.”

Visitors to the site can choose among eight quotes, ranging from “a moral threat to American freedom” (Newt Gingrich) to “the demise of a civilization” (Bernie Marcus). Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson is among those quoted on the blog vote, from the time he told The Wall Street Journal that unions are “one of the two fundamental threats of society.” The other, he said, is “radical Islam.”

It doesn’t say when, if ever, the tongue-in-cheek award will be given to the “corporate mouthpieces” listed on the union conglomerate’s blog.

Let’s just try and keep it real, folks.

Nicole Lucht covers health care, workplace and banking issues for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-8832 or at [email protected].