With the Republican Senate minority having successfully filibustered and stopped the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have leveled the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining, the AFL-CIO has decided to go beyond that. Far beyond that.

Delegates to the national AFL-CIO convention voted this week to launch a multi-year drive to make fundamental changes in the National Labor Relations Act, the nation’s basic labor law.

“The reforms should speak to the critical place of labor organizations and collective bargaining in redressing growing income inequality and the resulting imbalance in our political system,” the convention’s resolution declares.

The federation’s proposal would extend labor law coverage to millions of workers, open up workplaces to union access, bar so-called “captive audience” meetings, outlaw so-called “right to work” laws, and expedite union elections. 

It also would write “other reliable evidence of majority support” for unions – not just NLRB-run elections -- into the nation’s basic labor statute and strengthen fines and penalties for labor law-breaking.
 
It would mandate supervised bargaining for a first contract, with mediation and, as a last resort, binding arbitration. Too many unions now win recognition votes at workplaces, but never get that first contract due to employer stalling and law-breaking.

If enacted, the plan would be the first major overhaul of the National Labor Relations Act since 1947, when Republicans passed the Taft-Hartley Act and weakened labor protections over President Harry Truman’s veto.

But passage of anything like the AFL-CIO proposal would be challenging. Republican and business opposition is guaranteed and support from many Democrats is likely to be tepid.

Unions are encouraged, however, by the fact that all seats on the National Labor Relations Board have been filled – after a 10-year wait. The NLRB conducts union elections and enforces worker rights. Working with community allies is a major focus of the convention and will be part of any strategy the federation pursues for labor law reform.

“Today, labor law no longer fits the economy, the employment relationship, or the workplace,” the resolution declares. “After almost 80 years of practice, employers, aided by Taft-Hartley and a multi-billion-dollar industry of ‘union avoidance’ consultants, nearly perfected the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle exercise of the very economic power the act was designed to counterbalance, to ‘persuade’ employees to remain unrepresented.

“The reforms should not simply reaffirm a right to representation and to work under a collectively bargained agreement that is never realized by the vast majority of U.S. workers, but should expressly encourage the exercise of that right and include sufficiently strong substantive changes to make the right meaningful and real for all workers.”