Unions, employers gearing up for card check battle

To hear Collegeville [Pa.] builder Gustavo Perea tell it, the prospect is frightening.

Some ambitious union organizer would take his carpenters out to a bar, buy them a couple of beers, get them to sign some union cards, and the next thing Perea knows, he'd wake up in the morning with a union shop.

That's how he imagines the future if the federal Employee Free Choice Act is passed--a proposed law that unions say would make it easier for them to bring unions into workplaces. It would allow workers to bypass traditional union-establishing elections if a majority sign cards that would authorize a union, a process known as card check, according to a Feb. 17 article in The Philadelphia Enquirer.

Read a blog about the card check bill.