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McCaskill: Card-Check (not EFCA) is Dead This Year

By: LaborUnionReport (Diary)  |  April 14th, 2010 at 04:06 PM  | 

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Sen Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has told reporters that ‘card-check’ (but not the hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act) is dead this year:

[via National Review]

McCaskill said that while senators were still negotiating the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a controversial bill to reform union organizing rules, it was unlikely to even include the actual “card check” provision itself, which has been the subject of malign by conservatives and business groups.

“I don’t think that card check is going to come up,” McCaskill said during a weekly conference call with Missouri journalists. “It has not come up, and believe me: if card check, the way it was drafted, was going to come up, it probably would have come up early in 2009 as opposed to now.”

EFCA was a top priority of the labor community heading into last year’s Congress, but the emergence of a series of Democrats to have questioned some of its provisions, along with timing issues on jobs and healthcare legislation, had left the bill on the backburner.

“I think there’s a lot of negotiation that’s going on about card check,” McCaskill said. “Businesses are at the table, and frankly I don’t think the card checking part is the part that’s being discussed at this point; I think that’s been abandoned.”

While McCaskill did not say what is being negotiated as an alternative, the prospects still likely include some version of first-contract arbitration, monetary fines that the union-controlled NLRB could levy, as well as equal time/equal access for union organizers to come onto employer property.

Presumably, the job-destroying Employee Free Choice Act will never really die…at least not until after November.
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Cross-posted.

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  • Achance

    the rest of that stuff were I a union leader. If there is any interest in unionization at all, it isn’t hard to get 30% or more to sign cards; unions know this and so do employers. The employer game then becomes stringing it out to first get to an election and second, if the union wins the election to get past the one year bar on another election. Stiff penalties, a union friendly NLRB, and the arbitration rules will cause the unions to win a lot more elections and get a lot more initial contracts without facing a decertification drive. ‘Course, I’m really torn about thiis because if the legislation passes, I stand to make a LOT of money if I’m willing to leave Alaska and play “Have gun, will travel” in the Lower 48. There probably aren’t 100 people in the whole Country who’ve ever even seen an interest arbitration outside professional baseball – and I be one of them!

    • JamesSmith130

      Liberal Lisa against a modified EFCA while you are still there. I’ve heard rumors that she is (or was until health care passed) open to supporting such legislation provided that card check is gone.

      And what scares me about labor arbitration is that it was a disaster for management in professional sports, and led to several strikes and lockouts.

      • Achance

        that was about “card check” representation, not the arbitration and the rest. She was opposed to card check but I don’t know how she feels about the rest. Both she and her dad are unfortunately among those Republicans that think if you’re nice to them, you can make a union like you. The biggest, actually pretty much the only, labor problems I had as Frank Murkowski’s LR guy was with the licenced maritime units of our ferry system. The Masters and the Engineers had endorsed Murkowski and their lobbyist was the son of an old Ketchikan friend of his. They were the only unions who could actually get to the Governor’s office, at first even without me being there. I was able to stop them getting to the Governor without me there, but I was never able to stop them getting to the Governor.

        Both Stevens and Young have been cozy with the private sector unions, especially the maritime unions, so it can be an issue. Of course, the Boy Senator is chattel property of the AFL-CIO.