Back in April, Democrat Harry Reid re-introduced another union-payback bill called the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (PSEECA). This union-payback bill is a massive federal takeover of the unionization and collective bargaining processes in all states, counties, and municipalities. Essentially, PSEECA federalizes the unionization of all police, firefighters, as well as EMS workers, irrespective of of their current state laws.
As the Heritage Foundation notes:
The bill would be more accurately named the Public Safety Employer Coercion Act. It would force state and local governments to collectively bargain with police officers, firefighters, and emergency personnel—whether or not collective bargaining would improve local public safety. This will directly affect the 21 states that do not already do this and would force states with collective bargaining to rewrite their codes to comply with the federal standard.
A federal mandate would strip away state sovereignty over labor relations. For many states, public sector collective bargaining makes little sense. Under this bill, they would have to do so anyway.
PSEECA would also affect volunteer fire and ambulance services that many municipalities currently have. And, knowing how unions need dues in order to survive, it is highly unlikely that “volunteerism” would be allowed in a unionized environment. PSEECA would almost certainly cause either the closure of volunteer fire companies and ambulance corps., or cause a tremendous tax increases in those municipalities.
Realizing that the bill has little chance of succeeding in the Senate, House Democrats (through James Clyburn D-SC) have pathetically attempted to sneak the bill into the spending bill intended to fund the war in Afghanistan. In doing this end run, Democrats and their union bosses are not only slapping America’s troops in the face and endangering their lives, they are hoping that the desire to keep our troops funded will override a rejection of the union-payback bill.
There are only two ways to stop this union takeover of public safety employees.
The first is to convince all Republicans and what few Democrats there are who still put higher value on America’s troops than on union bosses to strip PSEECA from the Afghanistan spending supplement.
The second is to…
Remember November.
2010 is America’s Thermopylae.
GOTV.
Read the rest of the Heritage Foundation’s piece here.
__________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.”Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
For more news and views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com.
