Without ‘Card Check.’ What Is EFCA Worth?
What Kind of Substitute Will Labor Accept?

After a four-year still unsuccessful campaign to win the right of workers to join unions without fear of intimidation by their employers, organized labor has not yet achieved its legislative goal, embodied in the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Under the original EFCA, when a majority of unorganized workers in a workplace sign union authorization cards, the National Labor Relations Board is required to certify that union as the representative of the entire bargaining unit of workers. The bill contains a provision for triple damages to workers who are fired during an organizing campaign, in violation of the labor law.

The EFCA bill also requires that if a company and the union cannot agree on the terms of a first contract after 90 days, the dispute is submitted for mediation for a 30-day period, after which the parties must accept binding arbitration. This process ensures that workers who choose a union can end up with a contract.

After bombarding members of Congress with millions of e-mails and a continuous barrage of phone calls, leaders of the AFL-CIO ad Change to Win are keenly disappointed by the lack of action from Congress, especially the Senate Democrats. The House has overwhelmingly approved EFCA, but it has been stalled in the Senate, because several Democrats strongly oppose the card-check principle and some would probably vote against EFCA in a showdown vote.

President Obama has repeatedly said that he favors EFCA and would sign it if it came across his desk,, but he expects Congress to act on the measure. Actually, the president is hoping that a bitter confrontation between the unions and employers can be avoided and that a compromise can be worked out. Sen. Tom Harkin, a key Democratic figure in promoting EFCA, is seeking a formula that will be acceptable to both sides.

Unions Are in a Quandary: What to Do about Organizing?

Many unions have been reluctant to initiate major organizing campaigns, preferring to wait as much as two years until an Employee Free Choice Act bill is approved, and recruiting drives become less costly and more effective. They have probably passed up some excellent prospects for organizing new members.

Unions have to be realistic about EFCA’s future. There’s not a ghost of a chance that the bill will be passed this December. And there’s a long wait, at least until mid-March 1010, when Congress reconvenes. With card-check no longer in the bill, any compromise measure may not be much different from what organizers face today.

If the labor movement has learned anything from its disappointing experience with EFCA, it is that e-mails and phone calls are not enough to win legislative victories. If unions wanted Employee Free Choice as much as they say they do, there should have been—and still can be—a variety of militant actions to grab the attention of Congress and the White House.

And the unions should have been organizing an army of unorganized workers to join the battle for a card-check EFCA, for it is in their interest to do so.

We have to get back to basics: If unions are good for workers, why are only one in 12 workers in private industry in labor organizations? Why do we have to spend millions of dollars and employ thousands of organizers to coax workers to join—and we’ve made so little progress? Who is to blame? What has to be done to restore the power unions had in earlier decades?

Our national leaders have the responsibility—and the opportunity—to chart a new course that will restore labor as a strong moral force in our society and as the consistent champion of working families. The test of labor leadership is NOW.—Harry Kelber

LaborTalk (19) will be posted here on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 and at our web sites: www.laborsvoiceforchange.org or www.laboreducator.org.