Despite not yet achieving a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (Minnesota, Georgia and Alaska election results are still awaiting finality), Big Union activists are pushing hard to get their Card Check Scam Bill enacted into law.
The Investor’s Business Daily takes a look at their efforts:
When the dust settled after the election last week, the Democrats fell just short of the 60-vote, filibuster-proof Senate majority they wanted. That’s put a question mark over one of the party’s most controversial initiatives: the Employee Free Choice Act.
Democrats, including President-elect Barack Obama, campaigned hard for the pro-union legislation, also known as “card check.” Big Labor, which threw its support behind the party, wants it badly. But without a filibuster-proof majority, its chances are slim.
That’s prompted rumors in Washington that unions might accept putting card check aside in favor of pushing issues like binding arbitration. Big Labor publicly scoffs at such talk.
AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuels said the card check side can count on 58 votes, just two votes short of the number needed to overcome a filibuster.
But three Senate races remain unresolved and some senators may flip, Samuels says. So they see no reason not to push for a vote.
“Business may be looking for a way out of this debate . . . because of the election results,” he said. “But this is a new president, a new Congress, and we hope to bring more Republicans on board.”
He conceded, though, that a Senate vote may have to wait until after Obama’s first 100 days.
. . . Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, which opposes unions, cited a Slate column by William Gould, a NLRB chairman under President Clinton, that advocated a compromise as evidence that Big Labor may take that option.
“The real power for organized labor comes in the forced arbitration,” Mix said. “The secret ballot provision (i.e., card check) is a political loser. They know that. So it’s trade bait for them.”
Brian Johnson, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, which opposes card check, says some activists fear business groups may accept a compromise.
“There is a scary idea that perhaps the chamber and other business groups might squish,” said Johnson, who added: “According to the chamber and people I’ve talked to, no, they’re still vehemently opposed.”
Robert Borosage, co-director of the labor-backed Campaign for American Future, says the anti-card-check forces are missing the point. Unions believe Democrats’ sweeping win last week means they have a mandate that includes card check.
Thanks to the Committee's election-year program, union-label candidates like Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.) are being given a choice: pledge to change course and support Right to Work going forward, or face the potential political consequences.
After union lawyers’ attempt to get the NLRB to block the vote failed, CWA union bosses backed down and departed AT&T workplace rather than face workers’ vote
Biden judicial nominee Nicole Berner has a track record of mindlessly repeating union bosses’ anti-Right to Work diatribes and defending their schemes to profit at the expense of the disabled.