American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), of course.
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Conservative groups are opening a new front in their effort to reshape American law, arguing that local governments have the power to write their own rules on a key labor issue that has, up to now, been the prerogative of states.
Beginning here in the hometown of Senator Rand Paul and the Chevy Corvette, groups including the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation and a newly formed nonprofit called Protect My Check are working together to influence local governments the same way they have influenced state legislatures, and anti-union ordinances are just the first step in the coordinated effort they envision.
ALEC also has an ongoing agenda to privatize education, water systems and roads and stopping the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
The minimum wage is also targeted.
Geographical considerations and other stuff below the fold:
West Virginia, New Mexico and Wisconsin are the states presently targeted on the ALEC map. Check your state's backside to see if ALEC has lasered a target there.
On the agenda:
ALEC has gone local. No, not Alec Baldwin. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that for the last few years has been drafting conservative legislation for state legislatures. According to an article in today's New York Times, this year ALEC started a new program called the American City County Exchange, which will draft conservative legislation for local legislatures.
Its first area of focus is right-to-work laws, the term for laws that prohibit labor unions from requiring their members to pay fees. The members still get the value of the union's work, but don't have to pay for it. This leaves the union with less resources to get politically involved. The goal of these laws is changing the balance of political competition.
.... What makes this secret process even worse is the involvement of an organization called Protect My Check. According to the article, Protect My Check has promised to cover any legal expenses that come from passing a right-to-work ordinance, which many people believe contravenes federal law. According to my research online, Protect My Check was only established this September and has no online presence. But the My Check My Choice website says that it was "started by Protect My Check, Inc.," even though the records show they were established on the same day and have offices in the same building in Tampa.
The spokesperson for Protect My Check told the Times that "his group’s donors were not public but, other than his own contribution, all of the money raised so far had been from local businesses and employers in the targeted counties." But how is anyone to know?
Protect My Check? How ironically named. Bye, bye paycheck is really what it means.
Also aligned with ALEC is the Heritage Foundation, presided over by former Senator from SC, Jim DeMint, which adds its reams of rhetoric against unions:
How Union Card Checks Block Workers' Free Choice
By James Sherk
Union activists argue that government-supervised secret-ballot organizing elections are "inherently and intensely coercive" and that publicly signing a union membership card in the presence of union organizers, known as card-check organizing, is the only way that workers can freely choose to unionize. But due to union organizers' techniques, card checks often do not reflect workers' free and considered choice about union membership.
Even when organizers do not illegally threaten workers, card checks expose workers to organizers' psychological manipulations and give them only one side of the story. Card checks lead many workers to make impulse decisions and expose workers who wish time to consider their decision to harassment by union organizers. Cards signed in public simply do not represent workers' free and considered choice.
ALEC is a cancer on our nation with its endless proliferation of new anti-people, anti-union, anti-fairness entities that surround us and strangle us.