Obama’s EFCA draws Fire from Liberal Professor at U of C!

It seems by the following article that Obama’s fellow Univ. of Chicago Law Professors don’t agree with him on the “goodness” of The Employee Free Choice Act. This is the act that he said will be the first thing he signs when assuming office on January 20, 2008. It is really a payback to the unions at the expense of the American worker for all the help and the money the unions gave Obama to push his election along.

It is at least heartening to see that even some of the most liberal of  the liberals find fault with Obama’s Socialist policies.

WSJ OpEd: EFCA Unconstitutional

 

Prof. Richard Epstein

University of Chicago Law School Professor Richard Epstein has a great OpEd in today’s Wall Street Journal suggesting that the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act is unconstitutional. Epstein writes:

Consider card check and the First Amendment. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) today, an employer can insist upon a secret ballot after 30% of workers indicate by card checks their interest in a union. The campaign that follows lets the employer air his views about the downsides of unionization before the vote takes place.

To be sure, the employer’s free-speech rights are limited under the NLRA. He cannot threaten to move or shut down if workers vote for the union. Nor can he promise higher wages if they don’t. But he can make predictions of what will happen if his firm is unionized, and he can point to the reversal of worker fortunes in other unionized firms.

The Supreme Court (unfortunately, in my view) has held that the peculiar labor-law environment justified these abridgements of ordinary speech rights. But it hardly follows that if the government can curtail speech rights, the EFCA can eliminate them. There is simply no legitimate government interest in promoting unionization that justifies a clandestine organizing campaign which denies all speech rights to the unions’ adversaries.

RWD