Labor union officials disclose card check plans, SOS Ballot responds
Save Our Secret Ballot www.SOSballot.org
Today’s Politico: Playbook quotes a labor official saying, “Anyone who thinks the battle over the Employee Free Choice Act is over is wrong with a capitol W. We are more determined than ever and the expenditures on ads and massive field operations show that we are putting 100 percent of our efforts behind this bill. This is going to be the biggest grassroots mobilization of America's workers since the final week of the presidential election. Everyone is working together including American Rights at Work, the AFL-CIO unions, and the Change to Win Unions. Going to be over 300 events nationwide. Events will all be joint with coalition groups including environmental groups, the faith community, the civil rights community, and many others. Events include: delivering signatures and letters to senators district offices, rallies, worker roundtables, letter writing and phone banking events, delegation visits, town halls, worksite leafleting, and editorial board meetings.”
Upon reading this, Save Our Secret Ballot’s National Chairman Rep. Ernest Istook responded that, “Those who oppose secret ballots are tireless, which is why we're staying aggressive to protect secret ballots, and make sure they can never be taken away. We cannot sit back and just wait. Putting that protection in state constitutions is the counter-attack that will preserve secret ballots, and the best way to halt the union bosses' assault on them.”
SOS Ballot’s upcoming activities include campaign launches in several more initiative states. As campaigns are launched and signatures are gathered for ballot qualification, petition gatherers will also ask people to sign letters to their Members of Congress asking them to stand up for a voter’s right to a secret ballot and to fight abusive and coercive union tactics. SOS Ballot also intends to release more polling results showing the high levels of union household support for secret ballots. Finally, SOS Ballot will release radio ads to air in local markets telling voters that Members are playing Washington games that insult their intelligence when they claim that a cloture vote is somehow not the same as supporting card check outright.
SOS Ballot is a 501c4 organization dedicated to educating the American public on the continued need for a secret ballot wherever state or federal law requires elections and seeks to protect voters from intimidation and harassment by empowering them to vote whether they wish to have the right to a secret ballot guaranteed in their state constitution. SOS Ballot campaigns are underway in Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota with additional state efforts pending. The Utah Legislature has already referred the measure to the 2010 general election ballot.
Audrey Mullen
Advocacy Ink
Ph. 703-548-1160
