The business lobby and Big Labor are girding for a
battle royal in the next Congress -- lobbyist Randy Johnson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
likens it to Armageddon -- and each side is expected to spend many millions of
dollars in the hope of winning on Capitol Hill.
The issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, known as
"card check," a pro-labor bill that would make it easier to organize workers
by ending an employer's right to insist on a secret-ballot workplace election where employees are deciding
whether to join a union. Under the legislation, if
a majority of eligible workers sign cards requesting
a union, an employer would then have to allow them
to join one.
The chamber and a coalition of business groups to which
it belongs are planning to spend more than $10 million combined on a lobbying and advertising drive
to defeat the bill.
"I've never seen the business community so focused and
coalesced on one issue and ready to go to the mat on
it," said Rhonda Bentz, a vice president of Navigators,
the firm that is spearheading the media effort for
the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, the broad
coalition that includes the chamber.
Card check, which passed the House in 2007 but failed in the Senate, is labor's top legislative priority. President-elect Obama supports the bill, as do most Democratic
lawmakers. With Democrats now controlling 58 seats in the new Senate, Republican leaders are hoping
to block card check through a filibuster.
The final outcome of two undecided Senate races for
seats in Georgia and Minnesota that belong to the GOP
could be the decisive factor. If Democrats pick up
those seats, they would have the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture and end a filibuster.
Several giant unions, led by the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union,
have launched pro-card-check grassroots drives in about a dozen states. The
AFL-CIO is also trying to raise as much as $30 million for an advertising campaign to push for enactment
next year.
Labor leaders view card check as one way to help the
nation's struggling economy. "We think it ought to be part of the president's economic agenda," said Bill Samuel, the top lobbyist for the AFL-CIO. "We believe it's part of the effort to jump-start the economy and put money in the pockets of consumers."
Labor leaders further note that in recent years hundreds
of thousands of workers have joined unions at such
companies as AT&T without holding secret-ballot elections. Instead, companies gave workers the
green light to form unions after a majority of eligible
employees signed cards requesting a union.
Business lobbyists acknowledge that some companies
have allowed card check, but say that they did so only
because of union pressure. Business interests argue
that the bill would lead to workers being coerced to
sign union cards, would raise employers' costs, and would thus lead to layoffs.
Outside analysts say that the labor movement sees card
check as a way to rebuild its power base and expand
the ranks of unionized workers, which have fallen dramatically
over the past few decades; only about 7.5 percent of workers employed in the private sector
now belong to a union.
After spending close to $400 million in the November election and working overtime
to boost the vote for Obama and numerous Democrats
in such key states as Florida, Indiana, and Ohio, labor
leaders are looking for lawmakers to return the favor.
Both labor and business predict that the House will
pass card check again early next year, but say that
the Senate could still prove difficult despite Democratic
gains in the chamber. The last time card check came
up, only one Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania,
backed the bill.
Johnson of the U.S. chamber says that if Republicans
filibuster, his side won't lose a cloture vote to cut off debate. Still, the
chamber and its allies aren't taking anything for granted. The chamber, Johnson
said, expects to spend in the "high seven figures" on its ads and an extensive grassroots campaign in
more than a dozen states.
In the election, the chamber spent close to $20 million on card-check-related issue ads in some 10 Senate races.
Chamber President Tom Donohue told National Journal
in an interview last week that his group's "overriding strategy in the election was to sustain
the ability to make sure that a filibuster could hold." The chamber, he added, is "very engaged" on behalf of Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., in his December 2 runoff election, and it is also working in Minnesota
to help GOP Sen. Norm Coleman in his recount battle.
In addition, said Bentz, the Coalition for a Democratic
Workplace, which boasts dozens of business trade groups,
has sent teams of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to talk
to staffers and lawmakers. The coalition plans to spend
almost $3 million on advertising through the end of January
or into early February.
Other muscle is being applied by a fledgling pro-business nonprofit called the Workforce Fairness Institute,
which has been doing grassroots work in 16 states for about six months, said Katie Packer, the
executive director. The institute, sources say, is
looking to raise about $10 million and has the backing of several big retailers.
It has also tapped GOP strategist Mark McKinnon to
serve as a spokesman and handle media.
"We see this bill for what it is -- a payback to labor for all they did to elect Obama," Packer said.
Gerald McEntee, the president of the American Federation
of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and his
labor allies are mobilizing to enhance the chances
for early passage of the bill. "We're going to do it like a political and an organizing
campaign," McEntee said. The AFL-CIO has deployed 150 full-time operatives to key states to coordinate the grassroots
work, and it has asked a number of its member unions
to each send another 50 to 100 operatives, he said.
Samuel added that the federation's mobilization effort will include worksite leafleting
and phone calls, e-mails, and faxes from rank-and-file workers. The bill is "about restoring the rights of workers," he said. Although the AFL-CIO wants the bill to be an early legislative priority,
McEntee said that it doesn't have to come up within the first 100 days of the new Congress, given other economic recovery
issues. "We want to see it passed as soon as possible by the
new Congress," he said.
But the SEIU and other unions are taking a more aggressive
approach. Anna Burger, the secretary-treasurer of the SEIU, told a packed press conference
a few days after the election that the bill needs to
be enacted in the first 100 days. Also working for the bill is the labor-linked liberal coalition American Rights at Work, whose
board includes AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and civil-rights and environmental leaders.
The coalition this month began a $2 million ad effort to build backing for a card-check bill. Mary Beth Maxwell, the coalition's executive director, said that the coalition has already
collected 800,000 of a hoped-for 1 million signatures (through the website FreeChoiceAct.org) supporting card check. Maxwell argued that the bill
"would allow public policy to catch up to what some
companies are already doing."
Nonetheless, advocates on both sides of the issue are
wondering whether the incoming Obama administration
will try to slow the legislation down, focusing first
on less contentious parts of its economic recovery
agenda.
Said Johnson: "Does Obama really want a huge firestorm out of the
business community right out of the box?"
