Roll Call newspaper (subscription required) is reporting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) is “sketching a process for railroading the bill [Card Check Forced Unionism Bill] through the floor as quickly as possible to prevent Republicans from rallying a major campaign against it, senior Democratic aides said.”
The scheme would require a deal cut with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the union bosses and even a group of holdout Democrat Senators including Pryor and Lincoln:
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has been working for months to put together a deal on “card check” legislation, which would make it easier for workers to unionize. Democrats had originally hoped to move a bill that would include not only that language changing how workers vote to join a union but also a provision requiring workers and employers to submit to binding federal arbitration to settle labor disagreements.
Business groups and Republicans have spent more than a year — and tens of millions of dollars — attacking the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, and by this spring, Harkin had lost not only the handful of Republicans that had supported similar bills but also a number of moderate Democrats. The bill essentially stalled in March, when then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) announced he would oppose it. Specter has since switched parties.
Since that time, Harkin and a small group of Democrats — including Arkansas Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln — have held on-again, off-again negotiations in an effort to restart the legislation, including the possibility of moving the arbitration provisions alone.
Despite news reports earlier this month that a deal had been cut, negotiations are continuing. “There’s no bill yet,” Lincoln said late last week.
As Harkin tries to build a consensus Democratic bill, Reid has been thinking through a strategy to pass it that would require not only the support of all 60 Democrats in the Senate, but also the physical presence of ailing Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) for floor votes, since Republicans are likely to filibuster the legislation.
Cutting off debate on the bill would likely ignite a major partisan firestorm, and top Democrats will look to make their move as fast as possible, according to the Democratic aides.
“This is not the kind of thing where we could have a long, drawn-out rollout. We’d have to say, ‘Here’s the deal,’ and then get to the floor and get it passed before anyone can mobilize against it,” one leadership aide said.
The leadership aide argued that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would also have to agree to the deal before Reid would be willing to bring it to the floor, since any major changes to the bill in the House or in conference would likely make final passage impossible in the Senate.
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
Mark Mix Voices His Concerns On Tennessee’s WDEF News 12 as Big Labor Prepares for a Card Check Election at the Chattanooga Volkswagen Plant.
“Employees who are the targets of union organizing campaigns, and who do not want to be subject to monopoly union representation, must be vigilant about their rights after Cemex,” the notice reads