A key senator and past sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, Arlen Specter, R-Pa., defected from it on March 24, saying he would not vote to end a planned Senate GOP filibuster aimed at killing the bill, labor’s top legislative priority.
Specter’s defection potentially deprived labor, and Senate Democrats, of what would be the needed 60th vote against the talkathon. It also sent union legislative representatives into a round of meetings to plot further strategy to get the bill past the Republican roadblock.
Specter frankly said he would be the key vote to break the filibuster, since he estimated the Democrats would have 59 votes by the time the legislation hits the floor, assuming Democrat Al Franken eventually gets Minnesota’s open seat. The Senate is the battleground for the bill.
Then Specter wrapped himself in the flag of the business campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act.
“The better way to expand labor’s clout in collective bargaining is through amendments to the NLRA (National Labor Relations Act) rather than on eliminating the secret ballot and mandatory arbitration,” Specter said in his floor speech.
Business’ multi-million dollar drive is centered around the theme of “secret ballot elections” for determining if employees at a workplace want to be union-represented. The Employee Free Choice Act preserves the elections, but also says workers can choose unionization through majority sign-up: Collection of signed union authorization cards from a majority of employees in a workplace.
The choice of sign-up or an election would be up to workers, not bosses, as it is now, the Employee Free Choice Act says. Instead of the act, Specter suggested a set of changes to the NLRA. His changes do not include majority sign-up or arbitration, but provide for mediation -- not arbitration -- if the two sides can’t reach a first contract within 120 days of starting bargaining.
In a Reuters interview, Vince Panvini, the SMWIA's Director of Government Affairs noted that: "He's going to have a hard time winning the general election without labor's support."