What The Hell Is EFCA Anyway And Why Is It The Holy Grail?

When Republicans have no answer for why anyone should trust anything they say now that their policies have brought our country to the verge of collapse, they scream "card check." To their Pavlovian base it's like screaming "Better dead than Red" or something about homos recruiting your children or Blacks getting our women or Mexicans taking our jobs. It's the far right's bright shiny objet du jour. But it's also something organized labor has lost it's own mind over.

That's not to say that the arguments in favor aren't 100% correct and that the far right isn't 100% wrong. It is and they are. But all through this past election cycle I kept hearing about how progressive, independent labor unions (so not just toadies like AFSCME) were pouring money into the campaigns of the most reactionary anti-working family nominal Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, proven assholes like Bruce Lunsford (KY) and John Barrow (GA). And every single time I would look into why, it was always that same answer: they had agreed to support EFCA. So what is it that would cause otherwise rational progressives to sell their souls to Satan?

H.R. 800 (and S. 1041), the Employee Free Choice Act could well be the single most important piece of economic legislation winding its way through Congress. The Senate version was introduced by Ted Kennedy and the only Democrats who are not co-sponsors aren't real Democrats anyway-- Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Blanche Lincoln (AR) and Ken Salazar (CO). Longtime working family champion George Miller (D-CA) introduced it in the House and there are 234 co-sponsors. A small handful of uber-reactionary anti-labor "Democrats," Dan Boren (OK), Gene Taylor (MS), Travis Childers (MS), Mike McIntyre (NC), and defeated jackasses Don Cazayoux (LA) and Tim Mahoney (FL), refused to sign on, but mainstream conservative Republicans like Frank Lobiondo (NJ), Peter King (NY), Steve LaTourette (OH), Chris Shays (CT), Chris Smith (NJ), Vito Fossella (NY), John McHugh (NY) are also co-sponsors.

OK, so what is it? In broad strokes, the bill seeks to allow working people to use collective bargaining to get better wages, benefits and working conditions by restoring workers’ freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union. If you thought that was a battle that was one decades ago, think again-- or read Cornell Professor Jefferson Cowie's simple explanation of why this bill is so crucial.

This evening at dinner I was reading from Barbara Ehrenreich's collection of essays, This Land Is YourTheir Land and I came across a chapter on EFCA: "Challenging The Workplace Dictatorship." I felt it was worth transcribing so I could share it with DWT readers.

When the Employee Free Choice Act came up for consideration in the Senate, conservative columnist George F. Will has suddenly developed a tender concern for workers' rights. The act, which would require employers to recognize a union whenever a majority of works sign union cards-- thus bypassing the often prolonged and creaky process of a National Labor Relations Board-supervised secret ballot vote-- has stalled, in part because of critics like Will who complained that it "strips all workers of privacy," and will repeal "a right to secret ballots-- long considered fundamental to a democratic culture." As he sees it, the unions are backing the act out of sheer desperation: since they can't seem to win a fair fight for workers' allegiance, they want government to take away the workers' rights and help herd them into union membership.

OK, now let's leave Will-land and enter an actual American workplace. Are you punched in? Good. The first thing to notice is that you've checked your basic civil rights at the door. Freedom of speech? Forget about it: Some employers bar speech of any kind with your fellow employees. I saw this firsthand at a chain restaurant and a Wal-Mart store. Wanna work? Zip your lips.

How about those privacy rights that Will so concerned about? Nada-- they don't exist outside of Will-land either. You probably had to pee in a cup to get your job in the first place, which constitutes a very intimate chemical invasion of privacy. In most states, your purse or backpack can be searched by the employer at any time; your emails and web activity can be monitored.

Right of assembly? Sorry, you don't have that either. In my experience, most managers see a group of three or more employees talking together as an insurrection in the making. Shut up and get back to work!

Since Will doesn't seem to know what happens before an NLRB-supervised secret ballot vote, here's how it works. During the increasingly prolonged lag between the initial card signing and the actual vote, management uses every means possible to intimidate, isolate, and harass the union's supporters. Most commonly workers are called away from their jobs and required to attend management-run meetings where they are subjected to anti-union harangues and videos. Note: Not only do workers lack freedom of assembly, they lack the freedom to not assemble. If management announces a 2 PM meeting, you better be there. These are called "captive audience meetings" for a reason.

At the meetings, which may take place daily in the weeks leading up to an NLRB election, management lays out a dire picture of what will happen if the union comes in: Workers will lose the right to talk to managers individually (not true); they will see their wages and benefits decline (emphatically not true); they will be stuck paying exorbitant dues (hardly); the company may have to move to Mexico ... Sorry, no questions or comments from the audience.

Most pro-union workers can withstand the company's mass captive audiences. Harder to resist are the one-on-one and small group meetings, where individual workers are grilled about their union allegiance for as many hours as it takes. During one union drive among truck drivers, management confronted workers one by one about personal issues like their credit ratings and family responsibilities. A lot of them finally broke down, and the union drive was defeated.

There's nothing wrong with management voicing its view on unions-- say, in a flyer to workers-- and certainly nothing wrong with secret ballots. The problem lies in the abuse of management power in the period between the initial union card signing and the NLRB-sponsored secret ballot election. If workers are willing to sign a union card-- which is a courageous step all by itself-- that should be enough to signify their choice.

Will calls the Employee Free Choice Act "Orwellian." But Orwell's fascist 1984 is already here and it's called the American workplace. What really scares employers about the Employee Free Choice Act is that it will begin to change that-- and bring the first stirrings of democracy to work.

Good news though-- all the Democrats elected in the Senate are likely to be EFCA supporters, as are almost all the new Democratic House members-- we'll have to see about the 2 right-wingers from Alabama the DCCC wasted so many millions of dollars electing-- and, more importantly, one of the sponsors of the Senate bill is Barack H. Obama. The House already passed the bill 241 to 185 on March 1, 2007. On June 26 the Republicans managed to filibuster the bill to death, 48 Republicans joining in that effort. The only Republican joining the Democrats to end the filibuster was Arlen Specter (R-PA). Tim Johnson (D-SD), a co-sponsor, was in the hospital and couldn't vote. Several of the anti-working families Republicans who joined the filibuster were defeated-- or have retired and been replaced-- by Democrats: Wayne Allard (CO), Elizabeth Dole (NC), Pete Domenici (NM), Gordon Smith (OR), Ted Stevens (AK), John Sununu (NH) and John Warner (VA). If the vote were to take place today there is every indication that it would be 59- 40. That's one short of passage-- and that's why the recount in Minnesota and the re-run in Georgia are both so important. Both Coleman and Chambliss hate working people and will do anything to hold them back. If either one of them is defeated, EFCA will pass. (The alternative is to persuade another Republican senator to come over to the Light-- maybe Olympia Snowe or George Voinovich or Lisa Murkowski.) But the best hope right now: defeat Saxby Chambliss and elect Jim Martin; we know which side each of them is on: