Look Around HR

The Las Vegas Sun has an excellent article detailing the Employee Free Choice Act. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but what caught my attention was some of the scary statistics from localities that already have card-check legislation.

From the Las Vegas Sun:

To illustrate card check’s cascading effect, Sonneborn pointed to Illinois.

The state passed mandatory card check in 2003. As a result, union density soared, she said. The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, for instance, doubled its number of bargaining units in four years, Sonneborn said.

In Las Vegas, the Culinary Union has tripled its membership over the past 20 years primarily through negotiating voluntary card check agreements with casino companies. The union added 10,000 members from 2002 to 2005 alone- and will add another 6,000 when MGM Mirage’s CityCenter opens in 2009.

In Canada, the effect also has been striking. Thirty-two percent of the country’s workers belong to a union, a density not seen in the United States since the American labor movement’s pinnacle in 1955. Only 12 percent of American workers today belong to a union. Labor benefits from mandatory card check laws in some Canadian provinces. Alberta sports the lowest union density of those places- a whopping 24 percent.

If Congress enacts similar legislation, expect to see Canada like unionization throughout the U.S.