news on the Employee Free Choice front

This is from the Hill: http://thehill.com/business--lobby/card-check-compromise-foes-to-meet-feinstein-2009-05-30.html

Note: this version is a watered down version of the original EFCA. Yes, it will help labor; but it is not the big victory labor wished if it passes. Although details are scant, several items will be stripped from this bill. Manditary arbitration is one.

Note in the article "centerist democrats worried about angering business". Yes, our buddies the dems are yet undermining labor once again. What else is new in the last 50 years.
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'Card-check' compromise foes to meet Feinstein

By Kevin Bogardus

Posted: 05/30/09 03:25 PM [ET]
Business leaders are scheduled to meet next week with a prominent Democratic senator who has proposed a compromise on a contentious union bill that industry has heavily lobbied against

.According to a schedule obtained by The Hill, executives are visiting Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) next Wednesday as part of a lobbying push against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), legislation that would make union organizing much easier if passed. Business leaders from 12 different states, organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are flying into Washington next week to lobby against the bill.

Feinstein has emerged as a key voice on the legislation. At first, her support for EFCA wavered since she is not a co-sponsor of the bill this Congress, unlike two years ago when she also voted for cloture on the bill. But now, Feinstein has floated a compromise for one of the bill’s provisions to help garner support from Senate centrists who are worried about angering the business community by voting for the bill.

EFCA is often called “card-check” because one of its provisions would allow workers to form unions not by secret ballot elections called for by management but by a majority of employees signing petition cards stating their intention to organize.

Feinstein’s compromise would replace that provision with a requirement that union elections be decided by mail-in ballots with the design that workers, not employers, would have a choice on when to form a union while their privacy would be protected from labor organizers.

Along with Feinstein, business leaders are also scheduled to meet with Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) — centrists who could decide the fate of EFCA. They both co-sponsored the bill last Congress but Bayh is not doing so this year.Union officials have been somewhat open to changes in the bill but business groups have lobbied against any compromise, saying the legislation would hurt industry revenue by leading to more strikes and work stoppages.

They have hammered Feinstein’s proposal because they believe it would still lead to intimidation of workers by union organizers.Labor groups disagree and campaigned extensively for the bill last election.

Unions believe the legislation will boost the economy by allowing workers to collectively bargain for better wages and benefits, increasing their spending power.Introduced in both the House and the Senate in March, the bill later lost momentum as Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, then a Republican, announced his opposition to the bill.

But with his recent party switch, Specter has been involved in negotiations on an EFCA compromise, giving new hope to union leaders.They will still have to win over centrists who have shied away from the bill. Support will be needed from senators like Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) — who has come out against the bill — if it is to pass this year.
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