KATIE PACKER

The Employee 'Forced' Choice Act  (EFCA)


Katie Packer, 07.08.09, 12:51 PM EDT

If it passes, unions stand to gain $35 billion.

In the nation's capital--a town that lives and breathes politics--there are a number of issues capturing the attention of elected officials and their staffs at any given time.

And while each of the issues is important to a particular group, the job of elected leadership is to deliver results that improve the state of the country and represent the interests of the citizens who placed them in a position of authority.

Yahoo! BuzzThis principle rings true irrespective of the political party in power. This certainly is the case concerning legislation before Congress, which would seriously damage our economy and eliminate worker rights while rewarding union bosses, under the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Small-business owners and other business leaders have worked together to promote the importance of protections afforded workers through secret ballots in union organizing elections and stressed that eliminating the right to a secret ballot would expose employees to intimidation and coercion. We have also worked hard to ensure that people in power understand that mandatory, binding arbitration would simultaneously take away the right of a worker to make decisions regarding their own terms of employment, while at the same time removing an employer's ability to run their own business, placing these decisions in the hands of government-appointed bureaucrats with no knowledge of specific industries or marketplaces.

We have seen research, which demonstrates that jobs would be lost as a result of the passage of EFCA; as many as 600,000 jobs in the first year alone would be shed according to a report presented by Anne Layne-Farrar of LECG Consulting. We have also seen polling data, which indicates there is little public support for what should really be called the "Employee Forced Choice Act." And we have seen the example of Canada, where similar legislation was reversed in provinces, due to the disastrous results of their own version of the "EFCA" experiment.

So one has to ask, why does Congress continue to consider legislation that the small-business community, employers and employees alike, oppose? Why would officials elected to represent the interests of the citizens in their district support a bill that takes away the rights of working Americans and results in job loss?


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