At the beginning of Obama’s term, big business was feeling a little apprehensive. Given the new president’s broad mandate and the large Democratic majorities in Congress, it looked as though he might be able to push through a wave of progressive legislation to match LBJ’s Great Society. The most unnerving of all these potential pieces of legislation was a bill that would balance the playing field between workers and management by making union organization simpler: the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
Big business freaked out, responding with biblical rhetoric and hundreds of millions of dollars in attack ads. But now, a year, later it looks as though they needn’t have worried themselves. EFCA’s momentum halted as the debate shifted entirely to healthcare reform and, as Harold Meyerson pointed out last week, the Coakley debacle sealed its fate.
But most political observers had given it up for dead months earlier. Despite the fact that the bill passed the House by a large majority in the 110th Congress (only two Democrats voted against it, and thirteen Republicans voted for), it was ominously never brought up to a vote in the 111th Congress. As a House aide on the labor committee explained to me, they wanted the Senate to pass it before they put their members out there again on a controversial vote—good luck with that. (Senate centrists waffled until the health care overwhelmed the EFCA debate.)
EFCA’s death isn’t terribly surprising. Labor law reform has a list of legislative failures almost as long as health care reform’s history of political defeat. FDR and the massive Democratic majorities of the 1930s were able to significantly change America’s labor law system for the better. Everyone else who has tried, has failed. Truman’s veto of the viciously anti-union Taft-Hartley Act was defeated by an alliance of Congressional conservatives in both parties. LBJ’s legislative winning streak was ended by a Republican filibuster (again backed by conservative Dems) in 1965 when he tried to ameliorate some of the harsher effects of that bill. Carter and Clinton’s efforts were both ended by a similar alliance, using similar tools: namely the arcane, anti-majoritarian rules of the Senate. Now EFCA has succumbed to those same forces. Some things never change.
you commies must be heart sick to see your attempt to eliminate the secret ballot thwarted…
We have the best government money can buy right now and with the ruling on corporate spending on elections (never mind the union part, they are routinely out spent 25:1) we will have an even better government For the Corporations, By the Corporations, and supported by the Corporations.
Thinking that maybe giving companies the same rights as “people” wasn’t such a good idea.
Reading the description that was linked, good fucking riddance.
Dirty Jackass Jake, when are you going to call Liz or Yoko at the Guild and organize the scab Stranger?
Card check sounds like freshman year in the Midwest: campus christians badgered everyone to attend their events, with a lot of peer pressure and “shun the non-believer” action. I suspect card check proponents can’t fathom why folks could personally and honestly not want to be in their club either.
The other parts of the bill sound really good.
If a secret ballot is good enough to elect the President it’s good enough to certify a union
The current system to vote on unions works. Unions are winning over 50% of the elections, seems fair. Unions want to take away a secret ballot vote, wonder why? Well, based on my experience unions dont even ask the NLRB for an election unless they have 80% of the cards signed. Why you might ask? Maybe the undue pressure organizers put on employees or the many statements and promises they make to get cards signed. When a large percentage of employees find out the truth (something the union isnt required by law to tell-company’s by law are) and the employee has a chance to make up their own mind in a secret ballot election, they tend to not vote for a union.
Unions did good things in the old days and we as employees enjoy the hard work they did. But the fact is they havent done much in 50 years. They are driven by the profit motive-Their biggest focus is on collecting more union dues. Many employees who vote for unions get screwed in their first contract because the union is so focused on mandatory membership and dues checkoff that their willing to give up what the employees Really Wanted in order to make sure they get their cash!…..Its all about the MONEY, the unions money.