EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT: LABOR'S TOP PRIORITY, BUT ROADBLOCKS REMAIN

Thursday, November 6, 2008

(PAI)

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT: LABOR’S TOP PRIORITY, BUT ROADBLOCKS REMAIN
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, to help level the playing field between workers and bosses in union organizing and in bargaining or first contracts, will be labor’s top priority in the new 111th Congress, top AFL-CIO officials said. But roadblocks remain for the legislation.

One big problem will be the U.S. Senate, where workers and their allies did not get the filibuster-proof 60-vote majority they were shooting for. The law, passé by the House in this Congress, was derailed by a Senate filibuster led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.). a virulent Right Winger who won re-election on Nov. 4.

Instead, unionists and their allies gained at least half a dozen seats--not enough to break up the talkathons--with one Senate race, in Georgia, headed for a runoff in December. That’s because Georgia law says a senator must be elected with an absolute majority of the votes, and minor-party candidates prevented anti-worker incumbent Saxby Chambliss (R) or state Rep. Jim Martin (D) from achieving that.

Three other Senate races, including those in Minnesota and Alaska, are still too close to call. So is the question of whether Democratic nominee Barack Obama won Missouri--he leas by 6,000 votes--or North Carolina.

But another problem may be that president-elect Obama and vice-president-elect Joseph Biden, both strong supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act, will have other economic issues on their platter first--and AFL-CIO leaders have not recently discussed EFCA’s provisions and its scheduling with Obama’s team.

“We discussed how to win the election, first,” Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said after the federation’s post-election news conference on Nov. 5.

The Employee Free Choice Act would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in union organizing and in bargaining initial contracts. It would write into labor law “card check” recognition of unions--a 45-year-old practice where unions are recognized if they sign a majority of covered workers at a site to NLRB election authorization cards.

But that recognition only occurs if the employer agrees, and employers rarely do so, opening the way nasty, vicious anti-union campaigns, featuring labor law-breaking, before the NLRB-run votes. Card check would virtually short-circuit such campaigns.

    The Employee Free Choice Act would also sharply increase penalties, to $20,000 per violation, for labor law-breaking. It would make it easier to get court orders against labor lawbreakers. And it would mandate binding arbitration between unions and bosses if they cannot reach an initial contract within 120 days of starting talks.

    Trumka, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney and other union speakers emphasized the situation would change for the law just because two of its supporters will be in the White House, as opposed to anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, who hates it, and unions.

“For the first time in eight years, we have a president who supports workers’ rights,” federation Political Director Karen Ackerman added.

“We must counterbalance corporate power. The gap between the wealthy and everyone else has grown from a gulf to a chasm under Bush,” Sweeney said. “We
cannot rebuild the middle class and ensure that economic growth is shared unless we give working people back the freedom to improve their lives through unions and bargain for better wages and benefits.

“Workers in unions, after all, make 30% more than those without a union and there are much more likely to have benefits. And so our top priority is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that will restore workers’ freedom to bargain for a better life. In an economy that gives corporations too much power, a union card remains the single best ticket into the middle class,” Sweeney added.

But under questioning, Sweeney had no schedule for its consideration in the new Congress. “We don’t have final races on all congressional races yet. And we’ll be strategizing about it based on that situation,” he said. He also admitted “we have to see what the final results are from the Senate.”

“We’re a lot closer to passing it than we were before the election, because candidates up and down the ballot supported it,” added Legislative Director Bill Samuel.

Trumka said that every possible way to get the legislation through Congress will be on the table. The Chamber of Commerce and other business groups spent a combined $60 million in an anti-EFCA drive, focused on key and close Senate races, in the 2008 campaign’s homestretch. They have already made stopping it their top priority

“There are an infinite number of strategies to get it passed and each one of them will have our complete attention,” Trumka said.
###