Employee Free Choice Act Passes The House

241-185. The way that Nancy Pelosi has kept the caucus together for these votes is pretty amazing. This is a good day for the American worker, but the fight is not over.

Ezra Klein has a great riposte to these conservative blowhards who claim that card check deprives employees of their Constitutional right to a secret ballot and increases the chances of union boss intimidation.

Things an Employer Can Do To Keep You From Joining A Union: Force you into captive meetings. Threaten to close your plant/store/site. Threaten to fire you. Actually fire you. Hire professional union busters. Give preferential treatment, either through scheduling or promotion, to employees willing to identify union supporters. Reduce the hours or inconveniently schedule suspected union supporters. Fire union supporters. Reassign you.

What Unions Can Do: Demand you join a union. Ask you to join a union. Threaten to screw you if you don't support the union and one is created.

In other words, a workplace is not a democracy where labor and management stand in for Democrats and Republicans. Management holds all the cards in a non-union environment, and unless workers are free to collectively bargain they have little recourse for whatever management wants to do to them. An up or down vote is the fairest system to ensure a workplace free from intimidation and allowed to organize. We must end the terrible process of union busting in this country. It's debilitating to eliminating poverty and ensuring the rise of the middle class.

The EFCA will have a tough time in the Senate, and the President has threatened a veto. Time to light up the switchboards.

UPDATE: Brilliant stuff from Rep. George Miller (I think he's talking about his namesake Gary Miller at the beginning of this):