Unions key ingredient in recipe for electoral disaster

Be vewy, vewy afrwaid, if you are a Democrat.

Trumka predicts

The Hill reports AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka predicted yesterday that both EFCA and healthcare reform would pass in 2010. Taken at face value, a prediction by a labor leader that card check will pass appears more like whistling past a cemetery than likely to occur. But Trumka's actual remarks did not refer to EFCA, rather he predicted "labor reform" would pass. If labor revises its agenda to push quicker elections,  stiffer penalties for violations and union access to employees at work, Mr. Trumka could be correct.

Anti-EFCA study challenged

Liberal organization the Institute for Southern Studies rates Layne-Farrar's EFCA impact study seriously flawed. This is not the first criticism of the Layne-Farrar report. The latest edition of Just Labour, a research publication sponsored by Canada's York University's Center for Research on Work and Society, is devoted to the Canadian experience with both card check recognition and mandatory elections to determine representation. There is a lot to digest here, and it has a decidedly pro-labor tilt, but brings to the debate substantial comparative data that challenges assumptions previously made by EFCA opponents.