print Print Cartoon
Questions
1. President Obama has promised to do the following:
a) implement a cap and trade program
b) legalize a card check program
c) expand the SCHIP program
d) overturn the Mexico City policy
To which one of these does the cartoon refer?
2. Explain the basics of this plan.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answers.
Reprinted here with permission from Creators News Service.
Answers
1. This cartoon refers to President Obama’s promise to enact a card check program – the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)
2. The card check program can be explained as follows:
Legal recognition of a union has traditionally been achieved through secret ballot elections, in which each worker decides whether or not to support a union in the privacy of the voting booth — just like a person votes for the president or a senator. But unions frequently lose secret ballot elections. So they often bring intense pressure on companies to agree to a “card check” system instead of a secret election.
With card checks, paid union organizers try to persuade workers to sign cards saying that they favor union representation. This persuasion frequently takes the form of harassing visits to workers’ homes, deception, and coercion. As soon as more than 50 percent of the workers in a bargaining unit sign a card, the union can be recognized as the representative of 100 percent of the workers.
Card check campaigns generally occur in the context of a neutrality agreement, in which the company agrees to not speak to employees about the risks and downsides of union membership. When asked about neutrality agreements versus secret ballot elections in a 2005 Zogby poll, 59 percent of Americans agreed that “employers should be able to provide employees with information about unions and the potential impact of unionizing on their jobs.”
Read more at unionfacts.com.
