Employee Free Choice Act ("EFCA"): Franken supports the EFCA because its passage would maintain employees' ability to form unions. Coleman opposes the EFCA.
Union members support the EFCA. Michael Whitney, SEIU member and organizer, recently wrote: "The point of contention for CEOs looking to protect themselves in Coleman’s second term is the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill supported by Franken and opposed by Coleman that would make it easier for people to form or join unions to fight for better wages & benefits at work...the reason CEOs are throwing cash at Coleman is because they are afraid that Minnesota's working people would be able to have "more of a chance" to form unions, earn better wages and benefits, and rebuild Minnesota's middle class."
Minnesota CEO's and largest corporations oppose the EFCA (and workers' rights to organize), and they support Coleman.
"The Republican incumbent has drawn far more financial support from local executives than Democratic challenger Al Franken has...CEOs from the state's 50 largest public and 50 largest private companies combined to donate more than $100,000 to Coleman and not a penny to Franken. Business political action committees (PACs) also overwhelmingly supported Coleman. These groups gave $2.5 million to Coleman and just $15,000 to Franken."
(Norm Coleman, A Company Man, Twin Cities' Business Journal, October 24, 2008)
Incidentally, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace ("CDW") has sponsored television ads depicting Franken as anti-union for supporting the EFCA. However, CDW, a pro-business/anti-union group has actually spent thousands of dollars lobbying against the EFCA as part of their goal to block unions from being formed.
"Global corporations like Wal-Mart have hired the likes of Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and Employee Freedom Action Committee, run by former tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman, to blockade the Employee Free Choice Act. They are trying to make big business out to be David in this David and Goliath struggle, although it is union membership that has shrunk to David size over the past half century. Since its height in 1953, when 35 percent of workers belonged to unions, membership has now fallen to 12.1 percent."
-- United Steel Workers
Education: Al Franken has proposed a new tax credit for families earning under $200,000. The tax credit allows up to $5,000 a year per college student for up to four years. Franken favors an expansion of Early Childhood Family Education. Norm Coleman proposes making "adjustments" to ECFE and opposes any expansion of the program.
Social Security: Coleman favors the privatization of Social Security. Franken strongly opposes the privatization of Social Security, and will fight to keep it safe and out of the hands of Wall Street financiers.
Healthcare: Coleman favors a free-market approach to healthcare which utilizes Health Savings Accounts and Medicare Part D. Franken supports universal healthcare coverage and opposes Medicare Part D because it doesn't go far enough in protecting seniors from the high cost of prescription drugs.
Bush Tax Cuts: Franken is opposed to extending Bush's tax cuts for the top1% wage-earners in the country. He favors tax cuts for the middle class. Coleman supports making the cuts permanent, and supports tax breaks for big oil and gas companies.
Support for Presidential Candidates: Norm Coleman has voted with Bush 86% of the time. During 2003, he voted with Bush 98% of the time; 92% in 2004; 84% in 2005; 88% in 2006; and, after mid-term elections during which Republicans lost many congressional seats, 67% in 2007. (See StarTribune Editorial Counterpoint: Coleman's Record Shows Him as the Partisan He is). Coleman has endorsed John McCain for president. Al Franken supports Barack Obama.
Polling: Franken and Coleman are still polling extremely close. (Quinnipiac shows Franken ahead by 2%; SurveyUSA shows Coleman ahead by 2%; a new University of Wisconsin poll gives Franken a 6-point lead.)
The word on the street is that some voters are threatening to abstain from voting in this race due to the nastiness of the ad campaigns. Given that the worst ads are coming from outside the campaigns, specifically the National Republican Senatorial Committee, it is incumbent upon voters to consider the candidates' stance on issues and, where appropriate, party affiliation when they go to the polls on Tuesday, November 4.
Helpful Links:
League of Women Voters / Minnesota 2008 Voter Guide
Minnesota Secretary of State Website
MPR Select a Candidate
Helpful Links:
League of Women Voters / Minnesota 2008 Voter Guide
Minnesota Secretary of State Website
MPR Select a Candidate
More on Healthcare and Tax Relief
October Polling Recap
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Retired from a career in law and banking, Diana Raabe is a freelance writer/editor whose work has been featured on Gather.com for over three years. A member of The Loft Literary Center and the National Book Critics Circle, she blogs at The Raabe Review and Minnesota Campaign Report.
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Comments: 28
I will be voting for Frank Lautenberg for US Senate.
What is this labor union, of which you speak? Are some still standing?
Talk about misleading!
Imagine Fox Noise lost a slander suit against him. Under normal circumstacesm lost credibility would be the death of a news org. But too many enjoy being Lied to.
The fact that the organization who put out the ads criticizing Franken's opposition to the EFCA is the same organization spending thousands of dollars to kill the EFCA speaks volumes.
Think about it.
Unions want to get rid of the secret ballot so they can use violence and social ostracism to gain what they cannot get in a free and fair election.
Shame on people like Al Franken!
From Wikipedia
Isn't a "privacy issue"? Like abortion?
Franken is such a hack.
I guess all those devout feminists will still vote for him even though he writes porn.
But part of the EFCA does contain stipulations about taking the secret ballot away. Could WCCO, KSTP, KMSP, and KARE all be wrong? The have all done their fact checking on this and they all say that the bill contains this.
The bill may be 95% good in your opinion, but one trace of mercury poisons the water!
"No matter how hard opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act try or how many times they read the legislation (H.R. 800 and S. 1041), they will never find anywhere in the bill anything that bans workers from voting on whether or not they want to join a union.
But that hasn’t stopped anti-worker groups from ginning up a propaganda machine that spreads distortions and lies about what the bill does. Diane O’Brien, Minnesota AFL-CIO communications director, sends us the latest example.
Union members intercepted Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman (R) as he headed for a speaking engagement at the Humphrey Institute on the University of Minnesota campus Monday. When the workers asked Sen. Coleman to support the Employee Free Choice Act, the senator said he could not support the proposed law, which would strengthen workers’ rights to form and join unions.
Minnesota AFL-CIO Mobilizing and Organizing Director Candace Lund said that Coleman’s stance is based on a “deliberate misunderstanding of the bill.” She explains that the law would allow workers to choose a secret-ballot election or a majority sign-up process when deciding on a union. Business groups—and Sen. Coleman—claim the bill would ban the elections. Not true."
Read more...
It was the Communist government that prohibited the formation of free trade unions in 1980. Lech Wa??sa subsequently became chairman of the "Strike Coordination Committee of Solidarity" and was arrested in 1981. (etc.)
As we see the gap between rich and poor widen geometrically, we should all be concerned about protecting workers' rights. Franken knows this, to his great credit. I'll vote for him and beg everyone I know to do the same. If Coleman is re-elected, he'll go right back to siding with whoever will get him the most power. he once had principles and every now and then they surface, but he's basically an opportunist. Franken is an honest, straight-up guy.
The fact that most of us get a lunch break at all, that most of us work 40 hours a week, that most of us get a fair wage, if not decent, the our children aren't recruited out of school to work for below minimum wage, that we have holidays and weekends, and don't have to worry too much about forced working conditions.(again, most of us) All of these things, are thanks to unions.
My father, step father, and grandfather were all teamsters in the 70's. There was not a more brutal union to work for with more corruption. They were never forced to fill out a ballot in front of a union boss, or to cast a vote that they didn't want to cast. They did their best to change the union from within, even though it seemed like an uphill battle at times.
Labor unions made it possible for there to be a thriving, functioning middle class, and when they were broken during the 80's, the middle class started falling apart. When I was growing up, doctors and lawyers were wealthy people. Blue collar and low level white collar workers were middle class, and sent their children to state colleges for good educations.
Now doctors and lawyers are considered the middle class, and blue collar workers are almost non-existent. But.....we can't have those awful unions making us all Communists.
It's a pity that so many people don't understand that they are voting against their own interests when they vote against unions.