At the moment, the success of the Employee Free Choice Act depends on Senate Democrats’ ability to collect 60 votes for the bill – and on their ability to do it in a timely manner.
There are increasing indications that passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which supporters say would restore balance to the process by which workers organize unions and bargain contracts with their employers, will require compromise on some of its provisions. A July 17 article in The New York Times reported that six senators are considering dropping the provision of the bill that provides for majority signup – often called “card check,” but keeping its other tenets intact.
Card-check gives workers the power to form a union by signing cards authorizing union representation. It is the most controversial part of the bill, and labor leaders say it gives employees – not employers – the choice of if and how they form unions.
Possible replacements for card check, according to the Times article, include giving union organizers access to company property and barring employers from holding mandatory anti-union sessions – so-called “captive audience meetings” – with their employees. But the AFL-CIO says not to believe a compromise has been agreed on.
“What we have is a New York Times article,” said Candace Lund, organizing director for the Minnesota AFL-CIO, “not a bill.”
The AFL-CIO is asking its supporters not to believe rumors of a compromise. It is still focused on getting the full bill to the Senate for a vote, and is optimistic that as long as pro-labor senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, both of whom have been absent from the Senate on account of illness, participate in the vote, the bill will pass through the body in late September.
If labor agrees to a compromise, it must include what the AFL-CIO sees as the three central values of the act: making an easier path toward unionization for workers (card-check is one form of this), ramped-up penalties for employers who use illegal anti-union tactics and mandatory contracts within a year of unionization.
“If the compromise doesn’t have those core principles, we’ll just have to go ahead with the vote,” Lund said.
Josh Goldstein of American Rights at Work, a nonpartisan group that advocates for workers’ organizing rights, said leaders in the Senate will determine what a compromise bill – if there is one – might entail. “But in our organization, it will be judged on the fundamental principles of EFCA. We are still advocating the bill the way it is,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein added that ARW is open to improvements to the bill if they garner more support for it in the Senate.
The Employee Free Choice Act has 41 co-sponsors in the Senate, and three senators who say they support it. It needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, but only 51 votes to pass from the Senate to the House of Representatives, where Lund predicts it will have “no problem.”
Time is running out, however. The AFL-CIO was hoping to pass the Employee Free Choice Act before the Senate’s August recess, but now other battles are taking priority.
Lund predicts that a vote will happen by late September, but she acknowledges that its chances of passing grow slimmer as the Congressional midterm elections in 2010 loom closer. “The window of time is contracting fast,” she said, “and health care is dwarfing everything, although it is also a top priority for us.
“The New York Times article is unfortunate because it has emboldened the Chamber of Commerce to campaign against the bill,” Lund added. “But reports of the death of card check have been prematurely exaggerated.
“We don’t have a compromise, just an article.”
Rose Friedman is an intern with The Union Advocate, the official publication of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation.
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At the moment, the success of the Employee Free Choice Act depends on Senate Democrats’ ability to collect 60 votes for the bill – and on their ability to do it in a timely manner.
There are increasing indications that passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which supporters say would restore balance to the process by which workers organize unions and bargain contracts with their employers, will require compromise on some of its provisions. A July 17 article in The New York Times reported that six senators are considering dropping the provision of the bill that provides for majority signup – often called “card check,” but keeping its other tenets intact.
Card-check gives workers the power to form a union by signing cards authorizing union representation. It is the most controversial part of the bill, and labor leaders say it gives employees – not employers – the choice of if and how they form unions.
Possible replacements for card check, according to the Times article, include giving union organizers access to company property and barring employers from holding mandatory anti-union sessions – so-called “captive audience meetings” – with their employees. But the AFL-CIO says not to believe a compromise has been agreed on.
“What we have is a New York Times article,” said Candace Lund, organizing director for the Minnesota AFL-CIO, “not a bill.”
The AFL-CIO is asking its supporters not to believe rumors of a compromise. It is still focused on getting the full bill to the Senate for a vote, and is optimistic that as long as pro-labor senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, both of whom have been absent from the Senate on account of illness, participate in the vote, the bill will pass through the body in late September.
If labor agrees to a compromise, it must include what the AFL-CIO sees as the three central values of the act: making an easier path toward unionization for workers (card-check is one form of this), ramped-up penalties for employers who use illegal anti-union tactics and mandatory contracts within a year of unionization.
“If the compromise doesn’t have those core principles, we’ll just have to go ahead with the vote,” Lund said.
Josh Goldstein of American Rights at Work, a nonpartisan group that advocates for workers’ organizing rights, said leaders in the Senate will determine what a compromise bill – if there is one – might entail. “But in our organization, it will be judged on the fundamental principles of EFCA. We are still advocating the bill the way it is,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein added that ARW is open to improvements to the bill if they garner more support for it in the Senate.
The Employee Free Choice Act has 41 co-sponsors in the Senate, and three senators who say they support it. It needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, but only 51 votes to pass from the Senate to the House of Representatives, where Lund predicts it will have “no problem.”
Time is running out, however. The AFL-CIO was hoping to pass the Employee Free Choice Act before the Senate’s August recess, but now other battles are taking priority.
Lund predicts that a vote will happen by late September, but she acknowledges that its chances of passing grow slimmer as the Congressional midterm elections in 2010 loom closer. “The window of time is contracting fast,” she said, “and health care is dwarfing everything, although it is also a top priority for us.
“The New York Times article is unfortunate because it has emboldened the Chamber of Commerce to campaign against the bill,” Lund added. “But reports of the death of card check have been prematurely exaggerated.
“We don’t have a compromise, just an article.”
Rose Friedman is an intern with The Union Advocate, the official publication of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation.