Governor’s stimulus decision OK

There has been, understandably, an outcry from educators in the Valley and across the state in response to Gov. Palin’s decision to turn down portions of the federal stimulus money. A portion of the money would have been a boon to school districts. Locally, there’s been a struggle to keep teachers.

Certainly a few million dollars would go a long way toward that goal. The Mat-Su School Board just announced a proposed budget of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. That’s a lot of money, but what’s more interesting is that 90 percent of that sum goes to salaries and benefits — about $220 million.

The governor’s thinking, at least as reported, is that the money toward teacher retention, special programs and other like budget items is a short-term fix. After the new money is gone, school districts will be faced with the same problem a year or two down the road. At that time, will school officials be willing to accept the fact that there won’t be any windfall and make the cuts then?

Probably not. They’ll ask for money to continue on. This is the time to look the future in the face.

On the other hand, if some of that education money could go toward renovations and upgrades at schools that will prolong their useful lives and lead to one less bond proposal down the road, then the governor is being short-sighted.

Adding more to the 90 percent portion of the pot doesn’t create more jobs, it just saves some — for the time being.

The Employee Free Choice Act (HR 1409, S 560), also called card check, is proposed legislation that would change the current process in place for organizing unions in the workplace. If enacted, employees could ask a union for blank cards and then distribute them among the workers. If 30 percent of the workers agree, then the employer could decide whether to have a secret ballot vote. The truth, however, is that nobody’s going to tell the boss they want a union until they have at least 51 percent agreement among their fellow workers.

That’s where card check gets messy.

If 30 percent of the workers want to be in a union, 40 percent don’t care and 30 percent don’t want a union, there is ample opportunity for coercion.

As it stands today, employees voting on union representation get a ballot just like when people vote for a governor. Nobody knows or needs to know how they voted.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) takes that secret vote away. Instead of a private election process overseen by the impartial National Labor Relations Board, the EFCA would simply require the employee’s signature on a simple card with no restrictions or oversight as to how the signatures are collected. Imagine the pressure you would be under if a group of your coworkers and a union representative approached you and tells you to sign a card because they want a union. Better yet, picture the scenario if your direct supervisor tells you to sign the card because he/she wants union representation and if you refuse to sign they’ll make it difficult for you at work.

Unions have a respected place in employment history and served an important purpose in improving conditions for millions of American workers. However, with the myriad of current federal and state employment laws on the books protecting workers’ rights, belonging to a union becomes less necessary.

If passed, the EFCA would further devastate this nation’s already fragile economy and we see this as nothing more than a power play by unions to strengthen their numbers and add money to their shrinking coffers. The current laws have worked well, for businesses and for employees, for more than 50 years and shouldn’t be changed because union leadership is struggling to keep its membership.

Certainly, small-business people fear this will drive them out of business. That’s not unwarranted fear, if you’ve been reading the news about the automobile manufacturers’ bail-out requests. Auto workers pressed and pressed for more and better and now Detroit crumbles. Unions are finally making concessions when they shouldn’t have been so greedy in the first place.

The Employees Free Choice Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, but Alaska Sen. Mark Begich has signed on as a co-sponsor of this fatally flawed piece of legislation. We urge Begich and Sen. Lisa Murkowski to vote no on this bill and encourage you to contact them to weigh in on this, too.