The Employee Free Choice Act: Piercing the Rhetoric

A Briefing Book

U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Labor, Immigration & Employee Benefits Division

Download the full book (PDF)

This briefing book provides an analysis of the Employee Free Choice Act's three provisions: card check certification for union organizing, compulsory interest arbitration of first contracts, and increased penalties on employers. The book explains each provision and rebuts common rhetoric used by organized labor in supporting EFCA. Although the book is written for readers who are not labor lawyers, appendices include the bill text and a comparison between the National Labor Relations Act as it now reads and as EFCA would amend it, with analysis. The book concludes that no part of EFCA can be justified and that it is in the best interests if employees and employers alike if the bill is never enacted.

Support for EFCA appears to be weakening and there is now much talk of various "compromise" provisions being discussed on Capitol Hill. Many of these ideas are derived from the provisions of EFCA and this analysis will remain crucial to evaluating these proposals. We intend to supplement this analysis as necessary.