The 2008 Presidential Election was a monumental victory for both the Democratic Party and for organized labor alike. Barack Obama’s ascendance to the Presidency appeared to usher in a new era of American politics, and organized labor was betting big on Obama and his newly elected supermajorities to deliver on their promises of expanding workers’ rights and reversing the decades-long decline in union density. Labor’s number one priority was passing the Employee Free Choice Act which would have made union organizing significantly easier by enshrining the card-check process into law.
As it stands, employers have the ability to wage union busting campaigns against their workers over the course of a drawn-out union election process. Card-check would have simplified the union certification process by allowing a simple majority of employee-signed union authorization cards to certify the union as the official representative of the bargaining unit. Under current NLRB procedure, employers can opt to hold a union election if they refuse to voluntarily recognize the union after a majority of employees sign and present authorization cards. Union elections have proven themselves to be utterly redundant in most cases because a majority of signed a-cards is already indicative of the will of the bargaining unit. The union election process was expanded as a part of the infamous Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 as a method for employers to stop the rapid wave of unionization that was occurring throughout the New Deal Era.
Labor leaders saw the supposedly union friendly 111th Congress as their best opportunity to push the Employee Free Choice Act over the finish line. The EFCA had already passed in the House of Representatives once in the previous congress but ultimately failed to pass a Senate filibuster. In theory, the filibuster should not have been a problem for Senate Democrats since at various times throughout 2009 they had 60 votes. However, this “majority” was largely a paper tiger since at least five to six of these Democrats had questionable commitments to organized labor.
The corporate propaganda campaign against the EFCA began almost immediately after it was re-introduced in both chambers. Right-Wing pro-business front groups with inconspicuous names like “Coalition For a Democratic Workplace” and “Alliance for Worker Freedom” began repeating the same tried and true anti-union talking points across the media. Their main argument against the EFCA was that it eliminated the so-called “secret ballot election” since card-check negated the need for union elections. All these groups fear mongered about union organizers “bullying” workers into signing a-cards. This line of argumentation was particularly ironic considering that employers bully workers into voting down a union by threatening to fire them.
The amount of corporate money being dumped into anti-EFCA propaganda did not initially deter organized labor because they believed the newly elected Democratic majority would eventually come through for them. Senator Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic Party was initially a positive signal to labor since he was the lone Republican to vote for cloture on the original bill in 2007. It came as a shock when Specter announced his opposition to the card-check provision despite his previous support. The next Democrat to defect was Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Two of the top anti-union employers, Walmart, and Tyson Foods, are both headquartered in Arkansas. Both companies also happened to have contributed heavily to her past senatorial campaigns as well.
Throughout this entire legislative fight, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid gave assurances to labor and the press that he had the votes to secure the EFCA’s procedural passage to a full floor vote. However, in retrospect, that was never the case. The EFCA had six fewer co-sponsors than it did in 2007 at 41 out of 60. On the house side, Rep. George Miller indicated that he would not bring the bill to the floor until the moderates in the senate gave it their seal of approval. The next blow to the EFCA’s passage was when Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson announced his opposition to card-check. This brought the majority number down to 57 votes, far short of being filibuster proof. One thing became clear to Majority Leader Harry Reid and the rest of Democratic leadership; the card-check provision had to be removed to secure the EFCA’s passage.
In the summer of 2009, card-check was officially removed from the EFCA in favor of a compromised version of the bill written by a group of liberal and moderate Democratic senators. Labor settled for quicker union election periods, increased NLRB penalties for anti-union employers, and a ban on captive audience meetings. Despite these changes, the revised EFCA never received a full floor vote and was quickly forgotten about by Democratic leadership. Other legislative priorities like that of the Affordable Care Act quickly took precedent over the EFCA.
It is easy to blame the group of stubborn Blue Dog Democrats for the death of the EFCA. But we must acknowledge that this bill was set up for failure, and that sabotage came from within the Democratic Party. Several lobbying and consulting groups aligned with the Democratic Party were actively working with anti-union employers to defeat the EFCA. Walmart contracted Mehlman Vogel Castinetti (now the Mehlman Group) and the Podesta Group to manage their anti-EFCA lobbying campaign. Both firms employed former staffers associated with various prominent Democratic Party figures of the era. The Podesta group employed a former aide to Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, one of the Democrats leading the effort to pass the revised version of the EFCA. And Mehlman Vogel Castinetti employed a former congressional aide for Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama’s newly minted chief of staff. We would be naïve to believe that none of these lobbying connections influenced the decision to let the EFCA die in committee.
Labor must begin questioning Democratic leadership’s commitment to expanding workers’ rights. Moderate Democrats compromised by anti-union employers cannot continue to be given a free pass after they sabotage ambitious domestic policy agendas. It is far past time for union members and labor conscious voters to stop settling for less at the ballot box. Remember the story of the Employee Free Choice Act the next time Senate Democrats claim their hands are tied.
Photo: Jim West.