BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE UPDATES FOR DETAILS ON WHY THIS COMPROMISE SUCKS
There has been some buzz already but today Senators Specter and Feinstein officially announced that they have reached a compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act.
According to they story:
[Diane Feinstein's] proposal would replace the card-check provision, which would allow workers to unionize if a majority signed authorization cards and strip a company's ability to demand a secret ballot election. "It's a secret ballot that would be mailed in ... just like an absentee ballot. The individual could take it home and mail it in," Feinstein said. If a majority mailed the ballots to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB would recognize the union.
More below the fold:
This has obviously been a massive fight lately and led to quit a number of back and forth comments in my diary a couple days ago when Specter announced that he was planning to support the EFCA. Many of you correctly predicted that he would try to water down the act to try and simultaneously please his corporate puppeteers as Labor.
As Harkin says, the Feinstein compromise has the advantage of "protecting the secret ballot, so people can do it in private," which neutralizes that particular right-wing criticism of the bill.
You know why it neutralizes right-wing criticism of the bill? BECAUSE THE RIGHT WING IS GETTING WHAT THEY WANTED.
With Majority Sign Up (aka card check), the workers have the opportunity to circumvent the nasty and threatening anti union campaigns that leads to illegal firings and doens of other illegal squeeze tactics used by management against labor.
The Right-Wing likes to say that Union thugs will threaten workers if majority sign up passes. This is BULLSHIT since some states already allow majority sign up. In those states, out of 21,000 workers that become unionized thanks to majority sign up, only 1 complained about union pressure and that claim was dismissed as frivolous by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)!
There are 2 other provisions in the act. One steeply increases punishment for violations so that illegal anti-union tactics will no longer be just the cause of doing business. The other creates mandatory arbitration provisions so that management can no longer stall the first contract, fire pro union workers in the meantime and push for a new vote with a more favorable electorate. The right-wing got what they wanted on majority sign-up so now they want to compromise on mandatory arbitration as well!!!
The other bone of contention has been arbitration clause of the Employee Free Choice Act. Specter himself supports "last best offer" arbitration. It's also called "baseball arbitration," and has incentives to get both parties to quickly make their best, most reasonable offer. Bill Samuel of the AFL-CIO says "we're open to that."
Some Senators in our own party's ranks are squeamish about backing labor because...well...there is no good reason, they are just afraid of the corporate powers that be, that are vehemently opposed to this pro-worker legislation:
Labor will no doubt be disappointed with such sacrifices to the bill, but if it means getting something passed, they will probably be happy to make these concesssions which satisfy the demands of critics like Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, Jim Webb, Michael Bennet, Mark Udall and Ben Nelson.
There you have it, those are their names right there! Call them and tell them to support the EFCA in its current form and not to allow any further compromise!!!
UPDATE: Some Kossacks in the comments below seem to be in favor of this compromise, but they seem to believe it would be this or nothing. Let me first remind you all that in 2007, Specter, Feinstein, and the rest of the Democrats serving in the US Senate at the time all voted yes on the current version of the bill. They wanted to appear to support Labor then, but now are getting the squeeze from corporate donors, etc. There is a reason the right-wing is happy with this compromise. It gives employers the opportunity they don't deserve to pressure their workers and delay the process.
It is most definitely possible to pass the full EFCA. If we can't then we'll go back to the compromise, but Democratic Senators should at least be made to vote on the original bill before caving in and getting to claim a victory!
Additionally, as Delirium noted in the comments below:
In some theoretical sense that sort of mail-in ballot seems fine: It does provide a way for pro-union workers to express that position in private, free of influence from anyone pro or anti. That's probably why it's likely to garner a lot of support.
But in practice, if you require someone to go home, fill something out, and mail it in somewhere, a significant fraction of people will neglect to do it. What do their votes count as? In normal elections, they count as neither yes nor no; a politician wins an election by getting more mailed in votes than any opponent. But if I'm reading this summary, it effectively counts non-votes as "no" by default, because a majority of workers (not of voters) must mail in "yes" ballots for the unionization initiative to be deemed passed. That raises the bar significantly--- imagine how difficult it'd be to get elected if a Senate candidate, say, had to get over 50% of registered voters in their state to vote for them in order to win.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
UPDATE 2: Yes, this compromise is better than the status quo. And McCain would've been a step up from Bush. Please check the defeatist mentality people...
It doesn't matter if they are mail in ballots or not if the management still has the opportunity to delay the final vote and have one on one meetings to determine the workers' position, put the squeeze on them, fire workers, etc. ANY delay will strengthen management's ability to prevent a fair process significantly.
Look, we have 60 seats in the Senate, and 80 seat majority in the House and the most Pro-Labor President in DECADES in the White House. All the Senators trying to compromise now didn't need to in 2007 and they don't need to now. We need to continue to remind the blue dogs that they should toe the line, otherwise, like on this bill, they will control the final product on every piece of critical legislation.
If they wanted to compromise we should've compromised 2 years ago and gotten a half measure bill through. Majority sign up is the law in many states already (see above) and most of the rest of the industrialized world. Without it there will continue to be a significant effort to slow the process down, and valuable union time and effort will be put into countering anti-union behavior instead of actually fighting to improve working conditions, bargain, get health benefits, etc.
UPDATE 3: Another excellent comment below, this one by Graff4Dean, who worked for the NLRB:
I emphatically disagree. This is no compromise. Majority signup is the heart of this legislation. I've conducted NLRB elections. No one from management is allowed to watch people vote. There are closed voting booths that we set up...I set them up!
Nobody gives a shit if the election is at the workplace or if the ballots can be mailed it. What matters is whether or not the employer has the ability to leverage its position to indoctrinate the workers against the union BEFORE THE ELECTION TAKES PLACE!
Non-employee Union organizers are not allowed on the premises. Union-oriented conversations can only take place in the break rooms. By contrast, the employer can throw parties, force all workers to attend mandatory seminars and training sessions during company time about the evils of Unions. The pro-union employees are always identifiable and in the wide open; theoretical legal protection under the NLRA doesn't save them from sticking their necks out.
Hell, I'd take 60% of eligible names on the petition or a "I want an election" box; this is no compromise at all. This is us losing.
UPDATE 4: ....rolls eyes.... My fellow Kossacks - congratulations you have been had. You have handed over your Democracy. You now buy the Right-wing lie that a real majority is 60%, not 51%.
THERE ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH VOTES TO PASS EFCA IN ITS CURRENT FORM. We only need 51!! The DINOs flinching at the thought of actually passing good legislation can be pressured to vote for CLOTURE and then against the bill, if they see fit. There is no reason to compromise. WE HAVE THE VOTES. We can pass EFCA in its current form if we just give it at least one try. Make the blue dogs actually vote against cloture - I believe they will come back to us in the end on this one if we force them to choose. And what will we have lost if we don't? We can go back to the drawing board and then try this compromise....why are you so ready to give up?
UPDATE 5: Another great comment I just had to share, this one by costello7:
Our elections for union officers were always mail-in, everything included--pre-addressed, pre-stamped, etc. All anyone had to do was drop it in the mail.
The highest return I ever saw was about 18%. Generally, the returns ran less than three percent.
People simply aren't going to do it.
This "compromise" pretty much guarantees that no additional unions will ever be formed.
UPDATE 6: Keep these great comments/discussion coming folks! Here is a well informed comment from Pesto:
Is this just using the Railway Labor Act system (the voting system used for workers in the airlines, for instance) for the NLRA as well? Under the RLA, you file for an election, then the Board does absentee ballots and you need an absolute majority of the voters to vote "yes" to certify the union?
That would be an absolute disaster. I can't really believe that's what this compromise means.
Or, is it that workers just start mailing cards to the Board without anyone having to file a petition for an election or anything else? That petition is usually the official notice to the boss that an organizing campaign is going on.
I think this is a bad compromise on a number of levels, but it sounds to me like it eliminates the step of filing a petition just to get the Board to start paying attention.
And this one from SunsetMagnolia gives some judicial history in the comment EFCA v. Aaron Brothers Doctrine
UPDATE 7: Okay, thanks for all the great discussion...here s a last thought before I get back to studying (finals week!):
We should update the NLRB website and bring it into the 21st century,making it work for us. Why not, when we are modernizing everything else? What about the opportunity to to vote online? Say the cards that are collected through card check also include a box for your email and social security #, Driver's License # or some other identification).
When the NLRB certifies the cards for purpose of calling an election, they simply send an email out to all the workers via their email address provided on the card. The email includes a private website and password to use to vote on forming a union. Could this not feasibly be accomplished within a day or two of certifying cards? And it would reduce a lot of the atrocious problems raised with mail in ballots.
What do you folks think?
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Kossacks - what is to stop an employer from asking employees to come in and show them their ballot, filled in with "No" before mailing it in, in exchange for favorability? This "compromise" creates a way for management to ELIMINATE the "secret ballot" you have been convinced is under attack. Now the squeeze gets put on all the workers who REFUSE to bring their ballot...
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