Battle Deepens Over Employee Free Choice Act

Battle Deepens Over Union Organizing is an interesting December 9, 2008 Washington Post article about the Employee Free Choice Act. The point of the article is that this is going to be one of the early political battles in the young Obama Administration. As the article states:

Business and labor groups are intensifying their battle over a measure that would make it easier to organize unions, offering a preview of what is certain to be one of the earliest and hardest-fought legislative battles in the new Congress.

The Employee Free Choice Act would require employers to recognize unions once a majority of their workers sign cards of support. It also would require employers and unions to submit to binding arbitration if they are unable to reach a contract agreement within 120 days.

The changes would be the most significant in federal labor law in six decades, both sides say. Labor leaders and other supporters -- including President-elect Barack Obama -- say the measure would help restore bargaining power to workers whose wages have fallen behind inflation in recent years.

The proposal was the subject of a flurry of television advertising in several battleground Senate races this fall, but it never emerged as a front-line issue. Now, however, it is shaping up to be one of the most divisive battles facing the new Congress, and ultimately the Obama administration. On the campaign trail, Obama expressed strong support for the measure, which he co-sponsored as a senator, and he calls it an essential element in his vision for restoring middle-class prosperity.

The proposed legislation is opposed by a growing number of business groups, which frame it as an early test of Obama's economic pragmatism and see it as an attempt by unions to gain power they have lost as their ranks have dwindled in recent decades.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein