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Nov. 18, 2009
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JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 2, 2007 / 12 Adar, 5767

Dems vs. the secret ballot

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Behold, the self-styled friends of American labor. They are now trying to relieve the American worker of what they consider the unreasonable burden of the secret ballot, which is only one of the cardinal principles of free and fair elections.


The ballots in question are those in elections to determine whether or not a work force will unionize. Unions tend to win these elections when they occur (more than 60 percent of the time in 2005), but that's not good enough to stanch the bleeding in union membership. So the unions want to dispense with the elections in favor of a "card check" process. Or as a union official put it in an organizing dispute a few years ago, "There's no reason to subject the workers to an election."


House Democrats, who behave as if they hold their jobs only at the sufferance of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney (and some of them probably do), have duly obliged by passing legislation to do away with these pesky secret elections, which have been enshrined in the workplace since the National Labor Relations Act (aka the Wagner Act) of 1935. Instead, workers would become unionized when a majority of them signed an authorization card presented to them by union organizers.


The supporters of this card-check approach argue that it is freer from the taint of intimidation than the secret ballot. Perhaps through the looking glass. But a public process in which workers will feel peer and other pressures to sign up is obviously less likely to reflect their true sentiments than a secret ballot. Nonetheless, the Democrats call their legislation the Employee Free Choice Act, which is hilariously perverse.


The House vote is a vindication for the strategy of Sweeney, who, against the advice of union leaders who want to spend more on organizing, has insisted on continuing to bankroll the Democrats. His insight is that trying to unionize workers basically is hopeless without more Democrats in office to tip the playing field in the unions' favor. Hence the raw power play in employer-union relations on the House floor (thankfully the Senate is unlikely to go along).


Sweeney is correct, because most workers rationally calculating their interests will avoid unions. Union membership has shrunk to a husk of itself. In 2006, it was just 12 percent of workers, down from 12.5 percent only a year before and down from 20.1 percent in 1983. Almost half of those union members are government employees, and almost half live in just six states.


Unionization has declined along with the manufacturing sector, and stepped-up competition has made it harder for companies to bear the increased labor costs and workplace rigidities that come with unionization. Union organizers might as well show up at places of employment and say, "Hi, we're from the union, and we want to help make your company less agile and profitable."


Union advocates are missing the dynamic nature of the 21st-century American economy and misdiagnosing its ills. A new report from the centrist Democratic outfit Third Way punctures the myths of the left's economic "neopopulism." The middle class is not failing. It has grown wealthier (the median income of households with married couples in their working prime is more than $72,000). Americans aren't drowning in debt. They are taking on mortgages that represent investments in housing, and their assets are rising faster than their debts (real net worth for middle-income families has increased 35 percent over the past two decades).


And the American economy isn't in a globalization-induced eclipse. While imports have increased as a percentage of gross domestic product during the past 20 years, the jobless rate has fallen. The economy isn't suffering from a savings crisis. This supposed crisis is belied by "the fact that America boasts the largest investment community in the world, and that Americans plow billions of dollars into mutual funds and other investments every year."


So, American workers seem to be doing OK, except for the terrible stresses of elections, of course.

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© 2007 King Features Syndicate

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