Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check) - Critical Call Needed to your Senators

*** The title link above is a great website to find out who your Senators are, along with their office phone numbers. Please always be polite, and don't expect to speak directly with your Senator, but communicate to his/her staff what you would like him/her to hear from you. Also ask what their position is on the bill in question. ***

President Obama is about to keep his word to labor unions: Card Check legislation (The Employee Free Choice Act) was introduced into the Senate on March 10th, with 223 co-sponsors in the House and 40 in the Senate (you can think of those co-sponsors as "yes" votes for the bill).
Current labor law gives employees the right to hear about unionizing from both their management and reps from the labor union, with the issue then being decided in a secret ballot vote. In my opinion, this is a fair and balanced way to handle what could be a very volatile situation at some companies. Unions criticize the current policy as allowing management to take action against employees that are trying to rally others to the union cause - they think that the "balance of power" is with management. Card check would definitely swing this balance to the other side.

Card check changes the current system, and allows union reps into workplaces to sign employees up for the union. Once 51% have signed up (by signing certain cards, hence the name), the company is unionized without any secret ballot (or even public) election. Critics of card check - myself included - see a lot of potential for union reps to pressure employees publicly, in front of their co-workers, to sign their cards. Peer pressure becomes the driving force, instead of sound and reasoned decision-making.

Why is this issue critical to you, as an American citizen and a Christian? 3 reasons:

#1 Unions gave around $100 million to Democrats during the last election cycle. Currently unions only represent about 12% of the workforce (teachers, auto workers and government employees, for the most part). Look then at the moral and political causes and issues that union dues go to support. Do you want further money and support for these things? Again, the Democratic party has made homosexual marriage and abortion "rights" core issues within their party. They have chosen to stand for these things, and union dues overwhelmingly go to support their party and these causes. Is this what we want, millions (if not billions) more spent supporting these causes?

#2 Economists are estimating severe job losses from this legislation - good article to read here:

http://www.openmarket.org/2009/03/05/new-study-shows-job-loss-data-under-card-check/
Shouldn't the focus of legislation right now be to create new jobs and stimulate the economy? Take the example of Walmart, which has a very small profit margin - they make a lot of money, but their profit as a percentage of all their sales is very small. In short, higher costs to them = higher costs to you. Card check would result in significantly higher costs. This would indeed make life better for some who work at Walmart, as they might make more money... but anyone who shops at Walmart will experience higher prices. The higher wages also mean that less people will be able to have the now-fewer (but higher paying) jobs. So why would something like this be important to pass now, early in the administrations tenure, when the economy is already so bad? A good question to ask yourself, and it leads to point #3...

#3 This point is completely my opinion, I am answering my question from the end of #2 (in the interest of full disclosure). But if you look at the spending in the stimulus bill, the spending is focused in industries that typically have unions, and the job created are in those fields. Also, the money is released during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. I don't believe this is an accident. Taken together with this card check program which will exponentially increase the power and money available to unions (and the politicians/causes they support), I see an agenda at work here. Not a conspiracy theory, or anything crazy, but a logical assault on our political system. In summary, the Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. They are taking steps to consolidate this power, so as to remain in power for the long term. The outrage from the country will have evaporated by 2010, or 2012. But the money will be flowing from Washington, and in 1-3 more years our thinking will be a bit more conditioned by a very sympathic media (sympathetic to this administration). People who bring up then what is happening now will be "living in the past." Sadly, the Republicans could use all this to unify, and show the country a better way, but they have not. Some of them seem to have the fortitude for this battle, but others are content with the bones they are thrown from the table.

Pray about these issues, and seek what the Lord would have you do. But I would highly recommend that call to your Senator. If it's possible, this Act, and the agenda it is part of, must be stopped. The next issue is nationalized health care, and it will be up to vote on very quickly.

We must act now.