Let’s Accept the Republican Threat
To Filibuster the Health-Care Bill

Because of an upset victory by Republicans for the U.S; Senate seat in Massachusetts, formerly held by Ted Kennedy for 47 years, leading Democrats are in a quandary about what to do, since they now lack a 60th vote to stop a filibuster of the health-care reform bill.

With congressional Democrats expressing strong differences on how to proceed, there is a danger that a health care bill may not be passed or that its contents hopelessly compromised. .

A letter in the Boston Globe by Charley Richardson, a union steelworker, objects to the Democrats showing such decorum to the Republicans. The letter suggests a head-on challenge to GOP lawmakers. Here it is:

“Make them filibuster, I say. Not the false, polite, procedural filibuster of counting votes, but the real filibuster, in which senators have to speak continuously and refuse to give up the floor. I relish the idea of the American people, who in overwhelming numbers want health-care reform, watching the Republicans and their allies on C-SPAN tying up the Senate, blocking not only health-care reform, but all legislation from moving forward.

How long do we think it would take for the voters to rise up and force the Republicans to back off? People are dying while Senators play nice. Make the oppositionists expose themselves to the American public. Bring back the real filibuster.”

What Have Working People and Unions Gained in 2009?

The short answer is: very little, if anything. Wages are stagnant, even though productivity has increased significantly. Many unions, weakened by the economic crisis and a loss of members, have been forced to make concessions at the bargaining table.

The AFL-CIO and Change to Win can not boast of any new pro-worker legislation. They have not won paid medical and family leave, a benefit workers in other countries enjoy. There has been no improvement in occupational safety and health laws.

Most striking is labor’s failure to win passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), even though a majority of legislators in both the Senate and the House were in favor of the measure. Even as months passed, our national leaders remained silent about the failure of Congress to act, because they did not want to offend President Obama and the Democrats.

When the Democrats cut out “card check,” the very heart and core of EFCA, AFL-CIO leaders did not issue even a whimper of protest. And their silence continues while Senator. Tom Harkins (Dem-Iowa) is spending months seeking a watered-down "compromise" that will also please the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

A year has passed and still no hint that EFCA will be on the legislative calendar of Congress in 2010. The only ones that might be interested in reviving the legislation are the unions, and they are repeating their futile e-mail gestures to the lawmakers with little hope of succeeding.

So, unless AFL-CIO President Trumka and the Executive Council can come up with some realistic plan to resurrect the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, the four-year effort to win passage of EFCA will go down in labor history as its most costly and mishandled failure.

Can our leaders come up with a new plan that makes sense? If not, let them open up a debate to consider an alternate strategy.—Harry Kelber.

LaborTalk (33) will be posted here on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 and on our two web sites: www.laboreducator.org and www.laborsvoiceforchange.org