23 Mar 2009 Outrage of the Day: Turncoat Retailers Shop Card Check Compromise

As Mike Allen reports in this Politico article from Sunday night, three large retailers, Starbucks, Costco and Whole Food, are shopping around a so-called compromise on “card check” legislation, even though the position of business — that workers should be allowed to vote on whether their own workplace should be unionized — seems to hold the winning hand in the U.S. Senate.

(For those who haven’t followed the issue, the card check bill, formally and Orwellianly known as the Employee Free Choice Act, would allow labor unions to unionize workplaces without first winning a secret-ballot vote of the workers involved.)

Opponents of the legislation, which is backed by Big Labor (naturally!), the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party’s Congressional leadership, say the bill does not now have the sixty votes it needs to pass the Senate.

As Mike Allen reported:

Rhonda Bentz, on behalf of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which is working to defeat the measure, said: “Those three companies do not represent the business community’s position. Unions don’t have 60 votes in the Senate [for the measure] … A compromise such as this is at best seriously misguided or at worst akin to snatching defeat out of the hands of victory.”

I agree.

On a related issue, no word yet on whether President Obama will propose legislation to permit him to be re-elected if he can get 50 percent-plus-one of registered voters to call a secret phone number that will be monitored privately by the Democratic National Committee.

Hat tip: Carter Wood and Keith Smith at Shopfloor.org.