Employee Choice Down to 3

A follow-up to last week’s posting on China’s Next Growth Strategy.

According to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Unionizing Fight Focuses on 3 States” , the Employee Free Choice Act may come down to three senators … Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Michel Bennett of Colorado and Blanche Lincoln or Arkansas. Some interesting points from the article:

• The AFL-CIO has discussed having its members register as Republicans to vote against Specter in an upcoming primary if he doesn’t support them.
• The Service Employees International Union said “a no vote would affect its support for the Democrat (Bennett) in 2010”.
• According to a Gallup poll, 53% of respondents to a survey backed the concept of increased unionization, but only 12% are following the issue very closely.
  According to Arlen Specter, “This is the most hotly contested issue in a long time.”

So what do we think it means?

• The union is all about politics to get what it wants, and is willing to use pressure (we didn’t say intimidation) to achieve its objectives. Knowing they play hard ball in politics, think they’ll play hard ball in unionizing businesses? They’ll probably say, “If you are not union you’re not American” when in reality they will be pushing jobs off-shore in an economy that needs jobs as unions typically increase the costs of running a business.
• Most people don’t understand the consequences of the potential action. If 53% support the concept this can infer that they are unaware of the law of unintended results. Interestingly, when you tell people that there is no secret ballot, even if they support unions, they think this is wrong. Conceptually, many people believe unions increase wages (and who doesn’t want more money), but the backbone of the U.S. economy has been small business and entrepreneurism, both of which are not strengths of unions.
• With these three individuals being targets of unions, it is important for businesses to focus on contacting them. Companies like WESCO, Eaton, Lutron, A-D, Schaedler-YESCO, Colonial Electric and Sonepar should be able to reach out to Senator Specter. Rexel has a good presence in Colorado to contact Senator Bennett and unfortunately we don’t know of major players (other than some independents) in Arkansas. But if you have locations in these areas, buy from companies that are located in these states, or sell to distributors that operate in these states, you should contact these individuals and let them know your feelings about this bill. Each of the industry associations and marketing groups should also be contacting them to let them know how it will affect their members. Their contact info is:

• Arlen Specter

  Blanche Lincoln

  Michael Bennett

And don’t forget to contact your Senator or member of the House.

If the bill passes, you can be confident that:

• Some electrical industry companies will move manufacturing off-shore
• Electrical distributors will be impact through less customer opportunities (as they also move off-shore) as well as a unionized workforce. If you are an owner or senior manager, ask some of your peers that have unions in their warehouse or for their drivers. It doesn’t add to profits and productivity.
• Material costs will increase (someone has to pay for the increased costs to a business!)

Your thoughts?