Beware the packaging

I've known a lot of people who work for unions, and a lot of them truly believed they were better for it. I've also known some who have become victims of labor strife and lost everything they owned ... either because they followed in lockstep behind a strike or dared to cross the line in order to feed their family.

This isn't about whether anyone should be pro-union or anti-union, though. This is about the process by which you and I make that decision.

Your newly-elected Democrat Congress is pushing passage of something called the Employee Free Choice Act. Sounds great, huh? Well, as usual, that's what the Libs are counting on ... the fact that the media will trumpet this by name only and most of us won't bother even to take the neat little bow off this turd.

What this law will do ... and it will slide easily through Congress ... is give a union the right to represent workers at a company if it can get the majority of them to publicly sign a card indicating their support.

A little background. Congress passed a law in 1947 that mandated secret ballots be used when it came time for a company's employees to give the thumbs up or down to the union. Why? Well, if you've ever studied even the periphery of union history, you'd know of the strong-arm tactics unions once wielded to "persuade" workers to let them in the door.

Well, in the last 25 years, union membership in the U.S. has dwindled from around 21 percent of American workers to about 12 percent. That's a lot less union dues dollars, folks. And it's also a lot less union dues dollars (aka YOUR MONEY) for the Democrat political machine.

Now, recent polls have shown that anywhere from 55 to 60 percent of American workers would not want to work for unions. There have been a slew of companies whose employees, by secret ballot ... which is the LAW, have rejected unionization.

What the AFL-CIO and the Democrats are counting on is that if an employee's preference becomes less secret, he or she might become less willing to say "no" for fear of intimidation. That way, unions can recapture lost influence, and Democrats ultimately get more of your money. (If anyone's confused about that, unions don't support Republicans. They haven't, don't and won't.)

Their means to accomplish all this is to change a 60-year-old law that has sought to protect a worker's right to choose. And to do that, of course, they have to call their proposal something it's not. Because you, dear voter, are too stupid to know what's going on.

That is, after all, the liberal way.

(Imported from Feb. 22, 2007)