Rep. Carol Shea-Porter’s(D-NH) Big Labor Payoff

Time for some more local news. Carol Shea Porter and Paul Hodes, both Democrat New Hampshire congresspeople, have paid their debt to the labor unions. The payoff was made in the form of campaign donations, and the debt repaid with their votes.

From the New Hampshire Union Leader:

Blatant payoff: Hodes, Shea-Porter and Big Labor

We don’t know which should be of more concern about one of the first votes cast by U.S. Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes: Their quick and blatant payoff to labor unions or their thumbing their noses at the right to vote in private.

We have written about the vote in question. It goes by the incredible misnomer, Employee Free Choice Act of 2007.

It is anything but free choice.

It would do away with an individual’s right to vote, in secret, as to whether he or she wished to join a labor union. Instead, union organizers could demand recognition of their union merely by showing that employees have signed cards in their favor.

The catch is that the cards would be signed (and shown) in public, leaving individuals open to all manner of intimidation and peer pressure. Big Labor desperately wants this method of sign-up because it has steadily lost its appeal and dwindled in numbers in the American workplace.

But Big Labor has also donated millions and millions of dollars to Democratic candidates in recent years and their payoff was swift and sure. The new Congress, which claims to be ethically pure, quickly passed the card-check bill, with Hodes and Shea-Porter from New Hampshire in lockstep with their party.

That is pretty bad. But it is not wholly unexpected and there will no doubt be more such votes that Granite State voters should watch out for.

What may be worse is the nature of the bill itself. The right to the secret ballot is as close to sacred as it gets in our form of democracy. For New Hampshire’s two congressmen, who just got elected themselves, to take that away from America’s working men and women is incredible.

Granite Staters who chucked out Jeb Bradley and Charlie Bass last November, largely in reaction to the Bush mishandling of Iraq and GOP leadership failures, may be reconsidering those decisions more than once in the months ahead.

To read about how Carol Shea-Porter doesn’t believe you are one of her constituents if you didn’t vote for her, see here.

To read about how Carol Shea-Porter tried to intimidate her critics, read here.