HOW FAR UNIONS HAVE STRAYED: EFCA arbitration provisions would strip rights from employees

"I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty the principles of voluntarism. No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion."

Samuel Gompers, Founder, American Federation of Labor

These were once the words and ideals of the American labor movement. How far today's union bosses have strayed from their founder's ideals of liberty is highlighted by their push for the Orwellian Employee Free Choice Act (or EFCA).

Not only does EFCA strip workers of choice through its no-vote unionization provision (aka card-check), we've also pointed out how the mind-numbingly, moronically-named bill will lead workers down the path to serfdom. However, let us reiterate:

Under the oxymoronically-named Employee Free Choice Act, once binding arbitration kicks in, if employees had been tricked into unionization (under EFCA's no-vote unionization provision) and the government imposes its contract on the employer and employees, employees..:

1) CANNOT vote to ratify or reject the government contract

2) CANNOT modify the government contract

3) CANNOT kick the union out (for two years)

4) and, perhaps most importantly, CANNOT strike in protest.

Note: A strike is the collective withholding of labor and, if workers cannot withhold their labor, then they effectively become economic serfs.

Employees will be voiceless, powerless and left with two options: Either keep their mouths shut and accept it, or quit as individuals.

Under this Hobson's Choice, many companies will likely lose their best and brightest employees, as individual workers realize the loss of their personal freedoms.

Now, it seems, others are picking up on EFCA's neo-enslavement of workers under government-imposed contracts.

Erick Becker, a blogger at Examiner.com has written a good piece about EFCA's stripping of worker rights.

As commentators have pointed out, the EFCA arbitration provisions would take the right to vote and approve or reject a contract away from employees. Also, it is possible (but unclear in the bill) that employees could lose the right to strike once the arbitration process begins.

More importantly, employees would lose the right to change their minds after bringing in a union...

If EFCA becomes law, employees who vote in a union will be subject to a contract (which will undoubtedly require mandatory payment of union dues) for at least two years, with no way of protesting or changing their minds if the contract or the union isn’t what they were promised or what they expected.

You can read the rest of Erick's column here: EFCA arbitration provisions would strip rights from employees

As today's union bosses lobby to move workers toward serfdom, too few realize just how far unions have strayed from their founding principles.

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