Bill’s showing surprises many on Capitol Hill
ALTHOUGH IT FAILED to clear the U.S. Senate, the Employee Free Choice Act — a measure that would make it easier for workers to organize — came closer to passing Congress than many people would have predicted just a year or two ago.
EFCA cleared the House March 1 by a 241-185 margin, with 13 Republicans crossing party lines to vote yes. But it hung up in the Senate June 26 when supporters could not get the 60 votes needed to end debate and move to a final vote. The cloture vote was 51 to end debate and 48 to continue it. All Democrats supported cloture. So did Independents Joe Lieberman (CT) and Bernie Sanders (VT). Arlen Specter (PA) was the lone Republican voting yes. All other Republicans voted no.
Even if the bill had cleared Congress, Pres. Bush had pledged to veto it. But organized labor and other supporters were pleased about the measure’s strong showing — and confident that with a larger Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democratic president, the bill could still become law in the future.
The Senate will not likely consider EFCA again this year, however.
“The formal election campaign . . . has become a gory battle scene in which employers chop away . . . at the employees’ support for the union.”
— Cynthia Estlund, law professor, NYC School of Law
EFCA would modify the Labor Relations Act of 1935. It would require the National Labor Relations Board to certify a union when a majority of workers sign authorization cards and eliminate an employer’s option to call for a secret ballot election. (Workers themselves could request an election if 30 percent petition for one.) Employers often use the election option to buy time so they can resist the organizing drive using a variety of tactics — among them, harassment, intimidation, and firing leaders of the organizing effort. In 2005, more than 31,000 workers were disciplined or fired for union activity, according to a National Labor Relations Board annual report.
“The formal election campaign — which typically lasts about six weeks from the filing of the union’s petition but can often be prolonged by procedural maneuvers — has become a gory battle scene in which employers chop away, by legal and illegal means, at the employees’ support for the union,” said Cynthia Estlund, a New York City School of Law professor testifying before the Senate earlier this year.
The Act would also require that when the union and employer cannot agree on a first contract within 120 days that both parties submit to binding arbitration. This change is aimed at tactics used by some employers — such as stalling or refusing to bargain in good faith — in an effort to break newly-formed unions.
Finally, the law would stiffen the fine for certain unfair labor practices, providing for liquidated damages of two times back pay. “EFCA’s enhanced enforcement provisions are designed to give some teeth to a law whose toothlessness has become an international embarrassment,” Estulund said in her testimony.
Bridget Martin, director of the Boilermakers government affairs department, said EFCA’s passage in the House and near passage in the Senate, demonstrated how vital political involvement is to unions. “The vote in Congress on the Employee Free Choice Act is a perfect example of the difference one election can make. During the past decade of Republican dominance in Washington, ensuring workers’ right to join unions was off the agenda. Within a few months of the 2006 midterm elections, with overwhelming support from the new Democratic leadership and a few very courageous Republican allies, this long overdue reform of our nation’s labor law was within a few votes of landing on the President’s desk.”
