Having helped get the Democrats back in power, the Unions are calling in their favors, and the Democrats are responding -- putting forth a bill that would weaken national security but strengthen big labor, and in another bill, essentially doing away with democracy in the unionizing process.
As this article points out, in the House and Senate bills ostensibly implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission:
As a big payback to . . . powerful union bosses, the Democratic bill include[s] language that overturns rules disallowing the Transportation Security Administration's 43,000 airport screeners from unionizing.
Congress created the TSA post-9/11 to fix airports' deficient security. But it prohibited collective bargaining precisely because it was known that it would compromise screeners' nimbleness and ability to respond to varying security demands.
And that move came shortly after congressional Democrats' successful efforts to strip from the Port Security Act a measure the International Longshoremen's Association considered bothersome.
Passed while Congress was still Republican-held, the law originally featured an amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) imposing a seven-year-freeze on hiring dock workers convicted of murder, bribery, identity fraud, illegal-firearms possession and other crimes.
Democrats, led in part by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), successfully stripped the provision during House-Senate conference committee.
You have to love the Democrats. If you are a friend of theirs, there is nothing you can't ask for. Even if it will clearly impact on national security. And then there is the Employee Free Choice Act:
Labor unions hope this exquisitely mistitled act, which the House of Representatives probably will pass this week, will compensate for their dwindling persuasiveness as they try to persuade workers to join. It would allow unions to organize workplaces without workers voting for unionization in elections with secret ballots. Instead, unions could use the "card check" system: Once a majority of a company's employees signs a card expressing consent, the union is automatically certified as the bargaining agent for all the workers.
Unions say the card-check system is needed to protect workers from anti-union pressure by employers before secret-ballot elections. Such supposed pressure is one of organized labor's alibis for declining membership.
There are, however, ample protections against employer pressures that really are abusive. Tellingly, the act would forbid employers from trying to influence -- pressure? -- employees by improving their lot: It would fine employers that, to reduce the incentive to unionize, give workers "unilateral" -- not negotiated -- improvements in compensation or working conditions during attempts at unionization. Clearly, the act aims less to help workers than to herd them as dues-payers into unions.
Under the card-check system, unions are able to, in effect, select the voters they want. It strips all workers of privacy and exposes them, one at a time, to the face-to-face pressure of union organizers who distribute and collect the cards. The Supreme Court has said that the card-check system is "admittedly inferior to the election process."
Repealing a right -- to secret ballots -- long considered fundamental to democratic culture would be a radical act. But labor is desperate.
Read the whole article from George Will. This one is beyond the pall.
Update: Powerline is following this one. They report that the Not Quite Free Choice Act passed the House by 228-183 with only 2 democrats breaking ranks.
Only two Dems were willing to stand up to the unions' pressure, Gene Taylor of Mississippi and Dan Boren of Oklahoma. Keep that in mind next time you hear nonsense in the press about "Blue Dog" Democrats, "conservative" Democrats, and next time you hear anyone try to tell you that the Democrats care anything about working men and women.
Read the whole post here. The Hill is following up the battle in the senate over the 9-11 legislation that contains the provisions allowing unionization of TSA workers. See there article here.
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From the NYPost, Debra Burlingame answers the question "why must Democrats constantly defend against charges that they can't be trusted on issues of national security?" According to Ms. Burlingame, one need only look at the Democrats fractured performance when faced with legislation to protect whistleblowers from individual liability when they report strange or suspicious behavior in mass transit - legislation pushed by Republicans and aimed directly at the Flying Imams lawsuit.
