For labor unions, polls show promise
by Robert Cohen/Star-Ledger Washington Bureau
Saturday July 12, 2008, 3:02 PM
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WASHINGTON — The nation’s labor unions, in decline for decades and on the defensive for eight years during the Bush administration, are counting on a major revival if Barack Obama is elected president in November and Democrats gain stronger majorities in Congress.
With plans to spend at least $300 million on voter registration, issue ads, direct mail, get-out-the-vote operations and other campaign activities, organized labor sees the 2008 election as a watershed moment, and it has lined up solidly behind the Democratic presidential candidate.
“This election for the labor movement and for workers generally is as important as any election since 1932,” said David Bonior, a former Michigan congressman and now chairman of the labor advocacy group American Rights at Work.
On labor’s agenda are a series of economic, trade, health care and worker-safety issues. But Bonior said the top priority is enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much easier for unions to organize workplaces, increase their dwindling memberships and ultimately boost their political and economic clout.
He likened the measure to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which protected the right to organize, engage in collective bargaining and strike private-sector employers.
“Such an opportunity doesn’t come around very often,” said Bill Samuel, director of government affairs for the AFL-CIO. “This is an opportunity to get a Democratic president and bigger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate who support fixing the collective bargaining laws.”
The 10 million-member AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 unions, plans to spend $53 million on outreach to its members, while its affiliated unions have promised another $150 million for the fall campaigns. Change to Win Unions, a separate organization with 6 million members, including the Service Employees International Union, are expected to spend at least another $100 million.
The business community is not taking the challenge lightly, with many business leaders supporting Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
“This is potentially the most consequential election for labor unions since (the) 1930s,” said Steven Law, general counsel to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“The unions have the potential not merely to achieve slight adjustments but to change the rules of the game, and that is a major concern for the business community,” he said.
Law said the chamber will spend millions of dollars this fall “on substantial grassroots activities and issue advocacy” to alert business interests about what is at stake, particularly when it comes to the Employee Free Choice Act. He said other business organizations and coalitions are planning to invest large sums in similar efforts.
The Employee Free Choice Act would allow formation of unions if a majority of employees at a workplace sign a card or petition, rather than cast their vote through a secret ballot. The bill also calls for mediation if a first contract is not negotiated within 90 days and, if necessary, binding arbitration.
The unions say under current law, some employers routinely control the election process through stalling and intimidation tactics, including firing union supporters, and have greatly hindered their ability to organize.
The business community argues the so-called card check proposal would take away the protection of secret ballot for workers and make them vulnerable to intimidation and coercion by union organizers. They also say it would limit the flexibility of employers, impose an arbitrary time frame for negotiation of a first contract, and ultimately hurt business growth and job creation.
The House passed the measure in 2007 by a 241-185 vote, but it stalled in the Senate because of a Republican filibuster. Obama, an Illinois senator, voted for the bill, while McCain, a senator from Arizona, supported the filibuster.
McCain spokesman Peter Feldman said the senator “supports the rights of employees to vote for union representation using a secret ballot and opposes efforts to deny them this right.”
Samuel, of the AFL-CIO, said the Bush administration has shown “outright hostility toward workers and their unions with efforts to roll back wage and hour laws, worker safety and basic collective bargaining rights through legislation, regulation and lack of enforcement.”
“John McCain really has been part of the attack on workers,” Samuel said. “He would represent a continuation of the Bush agenda.”
Feldman, the McCain spokesman, said such “charges are more about partisan politics than any supposed interest in American working families.”
Union members represented about 35 percent of the U.S. workforce in the mid-1950s, but have dropped to about 12 percent today, and only 8 percent in the private sector.
Peter Francia, an East Carolina University professor and author of “The Future of Organized Labor in American Politics,” said despite reduced membership, union households made up 23 percent of the electorate in 2006, and 24 percent in 2004.
“Even though their numbers have dropped as a percentage in the workforce, labor unions are good at getting members out to the polls,” Francia said.
