Republicans in U.S. Senate stop Employee Free Choice Act

From the Minneapolis Labor Review, July 26, 2007

By Mark Gruenberg, PAI staff writer

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Union leaders vowed to keep union members and their allies campaigning for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), even after a procedural vote in the U.S. Senate June 26 derailed it. Most union leaders looked to the 2008 election to win a larger pro-worker Senate majority, elect a pro-worker president, and produce victory for the workers’ rights legislation.

The EFCA (HR 800) would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining.

The votes of 60 Senators were needed to end debate on the EFCA and clear the way to bring the bill to an up or down vote. While a majority voted to end debate, the 51-48 tally was nine votes short (and largely split along party lines).

Minnesota’s two U.S. Senators split on the vote, with DFL Sen. Amy Klobuchar voting “yes” to end debate and bring on a vote on the EFCA and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman voting “no.”

Among other things, EFCA would write “majority sign-up”— also called card-check recognition — into labor law, raise fines for labor law-breaking to $20,000 per violation, mandate mediation and arbitration if labor and management could not agree on a first contract within 90 days and outlaw boss-run “captive audience” anti-union meetings.

Passing the EFCA has been a top priority for both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Federation. Corporate America has vigorously opposed the bill.

All 48 Democrats who voted, two Democratic-leaning independents and one Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), voted to shut off debate and support workers’ rights. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), was still rehabilitating from serious surgery and did not vote. The other 48 Senate Republicans all voted against workers.

Presidential hopefuls split along party lines: Democrats Joseph Biden (Del.), Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), Chris Dodd (Conn.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), voted to end the filibuster, as did all wavering Democrats. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) voted to keep the debate going. So did all vulnerable Republicans, such as Minnesota’s Norm Coleman, John Sununu (N.H.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.).

Union leaders hailed the 51-vote majority as momentum towards increasing workers’ rights, especially when combined with the 241-185 House vote  March 1 to pass the bill. They promised Senate foes would see retribution at the ballot box next year.

One leader, Communications Workers of America president Larry Cohen, said unions should figure out how to insert the Employee Free Choice Act into other legislation, avoiding filibusters.

“Today’s vote shows a majority of the Senate supports changing the law to restore working people’s freedom to make their own choice to join a union and bargain for a better life,” AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney said. “That is a watershed achievement — one scarcely imagined just a couple of years ago — and an important step toward shoring up our nation’s struggling middle class.”

“It is sad and shameful that Republican Senators chose to block the road to the middle class… by throwing up procedural barricades from their minority position,” he added. Sweeney vowed workers would remember that “stunt… when they go to the ballot boxes in 2008.” He noted “the vote made clear exactly who is on the side of working families’ dreams and economic opportunity — and who is siding with corporate America to block those opportunities.”

Change to Win executive director Greg Tarpinian said “now we know where everyone stands on a worker’s right to freely choose a union. In 2008, we need to elect a bigger majority and a new president who will champion the interests of working families... The ways of politics blocked… an up-or-down vote on the Employee Free Choice Act. But every day, companies illegally block the will of the majority by intimidating, harassing or even firing workers who choose a union. And they do this without penalty.”

“The legal system that is supposed to protect workers is broken, and they are paying a terrible price,” noted Teamsters president James Hoffa. “Corporations trample on workers with reckless disregard for the law, and they must be stopped,” he added. Hoffa said employers constantly stymie workers’ efforts to have a voice on the job — a voice EFCA would help give them.

“Just last week, anti-union FedEx declared it would illegally fight workers in Wilmington, Mass., who voted overwhelmingly to join the Teamsters. Despite the election’s certification by the National Labor Relations Board, FedEx said it would ‘use the only means available to us to get a court review — refusing to bargain,’” Hoffa pointed out.

Steelworkers president Leo Gerard predicted the Employee Free Choice Act “will remain an issue working families will continue to work on until we achieve a bigger Democratic majority in the Senate and elect a new president” next year.

Unanimous support by the Democrats “offers real hope that soon workers will once again have a voice in deciding how they choose to organize as a union without being intimidated by their employer,” Gerard said. And it also “points the way toward overcoming the obstruction by big business and the Republicans who deny workers their basic right to have a greater say in their lives through collective bargaining.”

CWA’s Cohen said union members’ next steps should include not just politics, but continuing education of lawmakers and the country about how the bill would benefit everyone. He also said unions should look for other legislation that could include EFCA as an amendment, just as the raise in the minimum wage was inserted into President George W. Bush’s Iraq war funding bill.

“Although we didn’t reach the 60 votes necessary to end debate and allow a democratic majority vote on this bill, this vote sends a clear message: a majority of the Senate believes our current system of labor law is broken and that workers deserve respect and the right to make their own free and fair decisions about union representation,” Cohen said.

Cohen outlined steps ahead: “Continue to educate union households and the public about the decline of collective bargaining and the need to restore bargaining and organizing rights; Elect a president in 2008 who will lead the effort to enact this legislation, and; Develop strategies in the Senate that allow for passage of EFCA with majority support instead of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate.”

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