Card-check strategy on NLRB radar (Bush anti-union agenda)

http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business/112859123081470.xml&coll=2

Thursday, October 06, 2005
Alison Grant
Plain Dealer Reporter

...NLRB Chairman Robert Battista, appearing at a law seminar Wednesday in Cleveland, said card-check will be first on his agenda when President Bush nominates people to fill the vacancies. He predicted that will happen in late October or early November, though he said he has gotten no word on timing from the White House. The Senate has to approve the nominees.

That the Republican-controlled NLRB has even agreed to evaluate card-check sent shivers through organized labor, which says that the tactic is long enshrined in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.

With card-check, employers agree to recognize unions when a majority of employees sign cards saying they want a union. Card-check is often used with "neutrality agreements," in which employers agree to stay neutral in an organizing drive.

Unions say traditional organizing campaigns that end in secret ballot elections give employers room to coerce and intimidate employees. Employers counter that card-check is coercive because workers don't get the privacy of a secret ballot...