In a concentrated effort to find the 60 senators needed to overcome a planned GOP-led filibuster, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, spent much of May 19-21 in intensive talks with colleagues about changing the Employee Free Choice Act.
Meanwhile, religious leaders from around the country, part of a new coalition for worker rights created earlier in May, came to D.C., to campaign for the law. They lobbied wavering senators such as Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
The act, labor’s #1 priority, would help level the playing field in organizing and bargaining between workers and bosses. It would have workers, not bosses, choose how they want unions: Through verification that the union has a majority of signed election authorization cards, then immediate recognition, or after an NLRB-run election.
The law would also increase the fines for labor law-breaking, mandate binding arbitration if the two sides cannot reach a first contract after 120 days, and make it easier to get court orders against repeat offenders, such as Wal-Mart. A new report on labor law-breaking showed the monster anti-worker retailer alone broke labor law 288 times between 1998 and 2003.
In a May 19 press conference with the religious leaders, Harkin called the act “one of the real social justice measures” of recent years. And while both Harkin and the act’s union supporters emphasize its economic impact -- that it would give workers more economic leverage vis-à-vis bosses -- he said the moral dimension cannot be ignored.
“As our Jewish friends put it, this law is about healing the world. Our aim with this bill is to restore fairness to this process” of labor law, the senator said.
But business has wrapped itself in the flag of “preserving the secret ballot” in arguing against the bill’s top provision, the majority sign-up -- and that’s been the subject of the closed-door talks Harkin has held with Specter, Feinstein and other wavering senators.
Alternatives they have discussed include mail-in ballots to signify whether workers want to have the union represent them -- rather than polls at workplaces -- and union authorization cards that include a choice of “no union” on them.
“We’re talking about how it’s structured” to still have “majority sign-up” as a core principle of the law, Harkin said. “We’re also working on how to shorten the time
periods” before NLRB-run elections and “on having meaningful penalties” for labor law-breaking, he added. Shorter time periods before votes would reduce the law-breaking.
The study, by Cornell University Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, of NLRB cases from 1998-2003 and their aftermath, shows 23% of all labor-law breaking charges and 24% of serious charges -- illegal firings, spying and interrogation -- were filed before the NLRB-run elections.
One-sixth of the charges were sent in at least a month before union petitioned for the election. That indicates employers aren’t waiting for organizing to start before breaking the law.
And even after the union is recognized, Bronfenbrenner’s report says unions get first contracts in a year or less only 48% of the time. It takes up to two years in 63% of cases -- and more than three in one-quarter of them. That’s why the mandatory arbitration provision is in the measure.
“There has to be some finality” in bargaining and getting a contract, Harkin said.
The religious leaders said workers have waited too long for the playing field to be righted again. They cited Scripture -- and prominent religious leaders -- for their stands.
“Forty-five years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King was told ‘Now is not the time’ for civil rights laws. He was told ‘wait,’” and that was unacceptable, said Rev. Stephen Copley of Arkansas, the home state of Wal-Mart. So is the long wait since the original labor law was passed in 1935, Copley added.
Workers “are also being told ‘the economy isn’t very good, so this is not the right thing to do.’ But the last piece of the law was passed in the Depression,” Copley said.
He said he brought up those points in “very spirited discussions” with two other fence-sitters, Sens. Blanche Lincoln and David Pryor, both D-Ark. Copley also presented them with a petition signed by more than 100 Arkansas pastors.
Harkin buttressed the pastors’ point about the bill’s moral worth. “In a capitalist system, too few people have too much money and too much power, while too many people have too little of both. And one of the functions of government is to right this imbalance,” he said.
Though Harkin is discussing the proposed law’s details with senators he needs to break the filibuster, he made it clear he is sticking with the bill’s principles. If those talks fail, he’ll take the original Employee Free Choice Act to the Senate floor and force his colleagues to take a stand. “If we don’t reach that” compromise, “it is my intent to put the original bill on the floor and make people vote on it, up or down,” Harkin ended.