Republican members of the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions issued a separate press release after today’s Hearing.   The full press release, entitled “Former Union Organizer Details Tactics of  ‘Manipulating Workers Just to Get a Majority on ‘the Cards’” can be read HERE.

Highlights:

A former union organizer today detailed for the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions tactics used to manipulate workers as part of controversial “card check” campaigns. . . .
“I began my career with UNITE with a strong belief in worker’s rights and democracy in the workplace,” said Jen Jason, a former organizer for UNITE-HERE, a union that represents nearly a million workers and retirees in the textile, lodging, foodservice, and manufacturing industries.  “During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric.  I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on ‘the cards’ and the various strategies that they employed.  I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at a worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a ‘service’ organization.” 

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 “It is beyond me how one can possibly claim that a system whereby everyone – your employer, your union organizer, and your co-workers – knows exactly how you vote on the issue of unionization gives an employee ‘free choice,’” said Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the Subcommittee’s Senior Republican.  “It seems pretty clear to me that the only way to ensure that a worker is ‘free to choose’ is to ensure that there’s a private ballot, so that no one knows how you voted.  I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker’s democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it ‘Employee Free Choice.’”