One of Big Labor’s big priorities is card check, which could make it easier for unions to organize a workplace by eliminating a secret ballot. Business alliances like the Coalition for Colorado Jobs are dead set against it.
“We’ve been urging members of our Congressional delegation for a number of years now to fight card check and EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act) and…to fight the whole thing,” said Chuck Berry, president of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, during a coalition event Sept. 2 in Denver. “We’ve not gotten firm commitments out of our senators, so we’re hoping that during this cycle, we could get them to at least resist the notion that this would be rammed through in a lame duck session – after the election but before the new Congress is sworn in, in January.”
One of those senators is U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who was asked about EFCA during a town hall later that day in Frisco.
“I think everybody that’s looking at this knows that that bill is not going to pass; it’s not going to come to the floor,” said Bennet. Asked if he would support it if it comes to a vote, Bennet said, “It won’t.”
Well, there you have it – sort of.
As WhoSaidYouSaid documented in July, Bennet is very squirrelly on the card check question.
“Which way on EFCA, senator?” editorialized The Denver Post 17 MONTHS AGO. Bennet, it seems, is no closer to taking a stand.
National Review Online published an interesting piece this morning, Big Labor’s Stealth Card-Check Strategy, that described their tactics, including Pres. Obama’s recess appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.
Becker has “suggested that card-check legislation could be implemented administratively, without congressional authorization,” wrote Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee. “And from his new perch at the NLRB — an agency dominated by Big Labor–friendly appointees — Becker is in a position to do just that.”
Bennet supported Becker in committee and on the Senate floor. Coloradans deserve to know where Bennet stands on card check BEFORE the Nov. 2 election. A lame duck session would be way too late to discover how much wiggle room there is in Sen. Bennet’s answer, “It won’t.”
