HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

New Choice for Labor Secretary Supports Secret Ballots For Democrats, Opposes Them for Workers

According to press reports, President-Elect Barack Obama will name Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) as his choice for Labor Secretary later today.

As a member of Congress, Rep. Solis co-sponsored the highly-controversial Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would end a worker’s right to a secret ballot when deciding whether to join a union.  She also voted for this anti-worker bill when Democrats passed it through the House on March 1, 2007.

However, Rep. Solis took a different tack on secret ballot elections when it came time for internal Democratic Caucus elections.  Specifically, she co-signed a letter criticizing the absence of secret ballots in electing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus leadership on January 5, 2007.  The letter explained:

“… votes by secret ballot were in order but never taken. We therefore believe that we need to follow proper rules of procedure and hold a vote by secret ballot.”

The letter continued:

“[I]t is important that the integrity of the [Congressional Hispanic Caucus] be unquestioned and above reproach.”

So Rep. Solis strongly supports secret ballot elections for Democrats, but opposes them for working Americans.  Ending secret ballots, as Democrats and their Big Labor allies have proposed, would leave workers vulnerable to coercion, pressure, and outright intimidation and threats – from either the management or the union side of the election.  And nearly 80 percent of Americans strongly oppose this bill.

That’s why Republicans are working to preserve the decades-old secret ballot election in the workplace – to prevent workers from being intimidated into doing something they don’t believe is in their best interests.  House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) recently said on Fox News Sunday that Republicans will do everything they can to stop the efforts of Democrats and Big Labor to kill the secret ballot, saying:

“This is, I think, an affront to the American people, and we will do everything we can to stop it.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 9:43 am and is filed under card check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “New Choice for Labor Secretary Supports Secret Ballots For Democrats, Opposes Them for Workers”

1. Jim Says:
   December 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am

   More democratic hypocrisy. Keep up the good fight, Leader Boehner.

2. Chuck Says:
   December 21st, 2008 at 5:00 pm

   Reality is, they don’t care one way or another about secret ballots or the workers who vote with them, this is pay back to the unions. So what if they trample over people’s rights?

3. John Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 7:13 am

   Keep up the good fight. The other side of the EFCA is that it would likely lead employers to move jobs overseas, particularly in manufacturing. Employers can not tolerate the complete loss of control over their labor costs, scheduling, terms, etc that would result from no ballot organizing and forced arbitration on the contract. This law scares me to death!

4. Anne Brooks Says:
   January 13th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

   This will ultimately strip workers of their right to privacy and exposes them to intimidation, deception, and coercion. This is an undemocratic power grab by special-interest union lobbyists it’s an outrage! No wonder unions are pressuring Congressional candidates to pledge support for a forced unionization bill, union membership has declined from 20% to 7.5% in the last twenty five years. So if they can put this kind of pressure on congress and these candidates, what happens when the vote is no longer private this will expose these workers to pressure, harassment, and possible threats from the unions.This is a corruption of government when lobbyists can bring this to the table since 87% of the American public support a federally-supervised, private election to decide unionization. We need to stand as Americans and fight against the (EFCA.) This will hurt the economy terribly and jobs will be lost because companies will not want to open factories in America. We can’t take this on our economy right now!

5. Sheila Cecil Says:
   January 25th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

   PLEASE! The Republicans must be more conservative. The Republicans need to channel Reagan. The Republicans need to become the anti-spending party. You guys really really messed up when you voted for that TARP. Your constinuents were expecting you guys to stand against it and you didn’t — you broke our hearts and were still crushed. That action really contributed to the loss of the presdiential election and worse yet, it has gagve your base, who are anti-spending (please understand this!) a lost feeling, a feeling of abandoment — like we don’t have anyone representing us anymore. The majority of people in the country across the board (I believe it was 70%) are against these bailouts — period. It seems obvious what you need to do. Do you guys think you are smarter than 70% of Americans. There are many brilliant Americans (I believe the dumb ones could likely be counted in that remaining 30%). Please stop the insanity so I can take my cash out from under my pillow some day and start getting back in the game — right now, you guys are just terrifying us.

   Listen — we don’t care if the inevitable and necessary ecomic correction causes a massive depression (which I personally don’t believe it will). Even if it did, we’d rather deal with that as individuals — coping with it as it comes — than have Fabian Socialism infiltrate our precious USA. Stop spending!! We don’t want nationalized banks, healthcare, car manufactures — ANYTHING. We’ve already had the New Deal — it brought us Welfare, Social Security, Fannie Mae, and many other irreversible and highly destructive programs. I would think that you get this already — but you don’t seem to vote as though you do.

   S. Cecil
   mom, small-business owner

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