Card-Check Fight Begins in Congress

This story appears in the March 16 print edition of Transport Topics.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate last week formally introduced the Employee Free Choice Act, the first shot in what is expected to be a fierce battle between organized labor and the business community, including American Trucking Associations.

Opponents of the legislation, which is aimed at making union organizing easier, said they were confident they would prevail.

On March 10, the chairmen of the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over labor issues — Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) — introduced so-called “card check” bills that they said would help the economy recover from the recession.

The legislation would allow unions to represent workers if they can get a majority of employees to sign union cards, rather than first requiring them to win a federally supervised vote of employees, as the current process requires.

Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said card check was “a critical step toward putting our economy back on track.”

Miller said, “If we want a fair and sustainable recovery from this economic crisis, we must give workers the ability to stand up for themselves and once again share in the prosperity they help to create.”

In a joint release, Miller and Ken-nedy said the bill would also create tougher penalties for employers who fire or discriminate against workers attempting to unionize and would force employers and unions to submit to binding arbitration if they are not able to agree on a first contract.

Opponents of the bill said the legislation would erode the right of employees to vote in secret.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the bill “the Employee ‘No Choice’ Act,” saying it was “undemocratic” and would “subvert the right to bargain freely over working terms and conditions.”

Card check is “anti-worker,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), while Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), said it was “one of the most anti-competitive measures that I’ve seen brought before Congress . . . This bill doesn’t help workers – it empowers those who are afraid of the outcome of a secret ballot election.”

“This is the worst possible time for this bill between its job-killing consequences and its destruction of the rights to have a secret ballot election and bargain in good faith without outside interference,” Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said. “I will not rest until this bill is dead.”

Co-sponsor Harkin said that “just as the National Labor Relations Act, the 40-hour week and the minimum wage helped to pull us out of the Great Depression and into a period of unprecedented prosperity, so, too, will the Employee Free Choice Act help reinvigorate our economy.”

“It’s a question of democratic freedoms in our country,” said ATA spokesman Clayton Boyce. “Every American should have the right to a private ballot to decide whether they will be represented by a union or not.”

“We don’t feel it is right,” said Kevin Burch, president of Jet Express Inc., Dayton, Ohio, and chairman of the Truckload Carriers Association. “When you vote, it is a private matter — you shouldn’t be questioned or intimidated. That  quite obviously isn’t the case in the current version of the card check legislation.”

In a statement, Teamsters union President James Hoffa lashed out at critics of the bill.

“Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?” he said. “Town meetings in New England are as democratic as they come, and they don’t use the secret ballot. Elections in the Soviet Union were by secret ballot, but those weren’t democratic.”

Randel Johnson, Chamber of Commerce vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits, said the group was “pleased” the bill had been introduced “so we can put a stake through its heart.”

“The more policymakers understand the bill, the better our chances to defeat it,” he said.

The Chamber of Commerce said that the card-check bill has seven fewer co-sponsors than it had last year, despite increased Democratic majorities in both chambers.

Some Democrats in the Senate, where passage will likely require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster,  already have said they are uncertain about the bill.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), told Bloomberg News that the card-check bill was “not perfect” and that he would prefer to see some compromise. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said she worried about “the impact on the economy.”

Landrieu is one of 10 senators who co-sponsored the legislation when it was introduced in 2007 but has yet to co-sponsor the current version.

Senior Reporter Rip Watson contributed to this story from Orlando, Fla.