While the nation's attention is turned to large financial firms crashing under the weight of their own bad financial decisions, presidential aspirants Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are both making wild claims about having special powers to fix the economy.
But George Will has a succinct statement about an issue, in the form of a bill currently before Congress, on which the candidates disagree strongly and for which voters would do much better to pay attention to rather than trying to figure out who has a magic wand:
"The exquisitely misnamed Employee Free Choice Act would strip from workers their right to secret ballots in unionization elections. Instead, unions could use the "card check" system: Once a majority of a company's employees -- each person confronted one-on-one by a union organizer in an inherently coercive setting -- sign cards expressing consent, the union would be certified as the bargaining agent for all workers. Proving that the law's purpose is less to improve workers' conditions than to capture dues-payers for the unions, the law will forbid employers from discouraging unionization by giving "unilateral" -- not negotiated -- improvements in compensation and working conditions."
At a time in which our global competitiveness is challenged like never before, Americans have to ask themselves how much they really want to add another layer of costs onto the private sector.
Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act and McCain does not.
You can read all of Will's column here.
1 comment:
The problem with on-site voting is that it gives management the ability to intimidate employees and discourage them from voting.
Republicans do this in elections by challenging a voter's right to vote for bogus reasons such as having the same name as a convicted felon from another state.
Union negotiation of wages is necessary for a vibrant economy. If money doesn't circulate then there's a stagnant economy, called "recession" or "depression." Too, money then accrues in the hands of the wealthy further pulls money out of circulation.
It doesn't trickle down. It accumulates into private hands. Reduced circulation of money reduces the taxes necessary for the successful operation of good government.
Our "global competitiveness" is challenged by our government's inept welfare payment to private corporations to export better paying American jobs to lower wage-paying foreign countries that exploits all workers including children, and resorts to slave labor. That's supposed to reduce adding "another layer of costs onto the private sector."
George Will is morally and ethically challenged, nor is he too fond of the Constitution that says "establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity."
Those damned pesky American values are the bane of conservative economic philosophy.
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