http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-unions19-2009may19,0,7360567.story?track=ntothtml
From the Los Angeles Times
Labor unions find themselves card-checkmated
Business groups have outmaneuvered workers groups,
jeopardizing key components of a congressional proposal that has been unions'
top priority. Labor supporters say their side has gotten disorganized.
By
Tom Hamburger
May 19, 2009
Reporting from Washington — In the
Ozark Mountain town of Rogers, Ark., more than 250 business owners gathered for
lunch at a construction company last month to focus on what they saw as a major
threat -- a proposal in Congress to make it easier to form labor
unions.
At each place setting, attendees found pre-stamped postcards and
pre-written letters to be sent to Arkansas' U.S. senators, Democrats Mark Pryor
and Blanche Lincoln, who had supported the labor bill in the past. After lunch,
the business owners were ushered to computers to send e-mail messages as
well.
Five days later came the good news: Two Senate votes had been
stripped from the pro-union bill. Lincoln said she would oppose it outright,
while Pryor declared the current version "dead" and said he would look for
compromises.
Today, thanks to those and other defections, key components
of the bill are in serious jeopardy. And the legislation has produced one of the
biggest surprises in Washington since Democrats swept the White House and
Congress: The nation's labor unions, which organized so effectively last year to
help elect President Obama, have been outmaneuvered so far on their top priority
by their opponents in the business community.
"We were outspent,
outhustled and outorganized," said one chagrined union advisor who was not
authorized to speak by name.
"The legislation is severely challenged,"
said John Wilhelm, hospitality president of Unite Here -- the textile, hotel and
culinary workers' union. "The unified business community has been so strident
about the issue, they have effectively achieved solidarity among Republican
senators."
The labor movement, somewhat divided, he said, has let
Democratic support drift away.
No legislation is more important to the
unions than the Employee Free Choice Act, which would ease the rules for forming
bargaining units and, union leaders believe, help the depleted labor movement
gain new members. Under its core provisions, unions could start a new bargaining
unit at a company if a majority of workers simply signed cards requesting one, a
process known as "card check."
The new system would eliminate the
company's option to call for secret ballot elections, which union officials have
long argued give companies the ability to manipulate and intimidate workers
before a unionization vote.
Businesses fear that card check would leave
workers vulnerable to coercion by union officials.
Organized labor
believed it could push card check into law.
In 2007, the measure passed
the House and gained more than 40 cosponsors in the Senate. Now, with even more
Democrats in the Senate and Obama in the White House, the unions saw the odds in
their favor. Obama's campaign stump speech last fall included strong support for
the legislation.
But once he was elected, labor leaders made a fateful
decision. Originally, they had planned to keep in place their extensive network
of field organizers, who had just worked to elect Democratic candidates, and ask
them to build pressure on lawmakers to vote for card check.
Instead, they
changed course. The labor groups scaled back, partly to give Obama time to get
his bearings amid the deepening economic crisis.
Business groups,
meanwhile, had started work well before the election and did not stop. They
feared that card check would lead to new unions and higher labor costs.
Opponents included retailers, such as Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, as well
as restaurant chains, construction firms and hotels.
More than 500
business and conservative organizations had formed the Coalition for a
Democratic Workplace to coordinate an array of trade associations and other
groups fighting card check. Since 2007, the umbrella group has spent as much as
$10 million. Its members include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which on its own
earmarked $20 million in 2008 and 2009 to defeat card check, on top of $35
million to elect business-friendly lawmakers in 2008.
Half a dozen other
groups backed by corporate, GOP or conservative ideological interests have also
joined the fray.
Before labor groups had fully engaged this winter, the
allied business groups successfully cast the legislation as undemocratic: How
could Congress oppose secret-ballot elections? They also hired well-connected
lobbyists. For example, Wal-Mart, one of the nation's largest employers and a
staunch foe of unionization efforts
, deployed Lincoln's former chief of
staff, as well as Pryor's former legislative director.
But the most
important part of the business strategy was coaxing thousands of small companies
to pressure their lawmakers, particularly moderate Democratic senators such as
Lincoln and Pryor.
Soon, Democrats were complaining at their weekly
caucus meetings of being whipsawed by the powerful lobbying on both sides. The
issue seemed to be everywhere. Even at a meeting on agriculture, one Lincoln
aide recalled, card check would be raised prominently.
When it came to
key senators, business interests outmuscled labor.
Lincoln, for example,
reported overwhelmingly more calls and letters from business interests and their
supporters than from the union side. And thanks to "airlift" programs run by the
Chamber of Commerce and allied groups, some key senators received far more
personal visits in Washington from card-check opponents than from
supporters.
Ten airlifts came from Arkansas alone -- on top of the 100
Arkansas business officials who arrived in April for an annual dinner with the
state's delegation.
The unions stepped up their pressure. On a frigid,
blustery day in early April, 100 union members gathered outside Lincoln's office
in Little Rock and chanted for her to support the legislation.
"Who can
give it to us?" a union organizer with a bullhorn asked.
"Sen. Lincoln!"
shouted the union members.
But it was too late. Lincoln, the target of so
many personal visits in Washington by business interests, had already decided to
oppose the legislation.
Another target for both sides in the debate was
Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who was then a Republican. Like Lincoln, he
had cosponsored the card-check bill in 2007.
Pressure on him came from
groups such as the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Assn., which represents grocery
stores. In March, it reported to its members that Specter appeared to be "on the
fence." The group urged: "Your associates, friends, family and neighbors should
flood Sen. Specter's office with letters, phone calls and e-mail messages."
Later that month, Specter announced that he would oppose the legislation
in its current form.
At least a half-dozen senators who supported the
legislation in 2007 either opposed the bill this year or expressed reservations.
That left the unions short of the 60 Senate votes they need to overcome a
bill-blocking filibuster.
With its chances fading, labor became divided.
Wilhelm complained that another union, the Service Employees International
Union, undermined labor unity by signaling openness to a compromise before the
rest of the movement was consulted. The SEIU rejected the criticism, with its
president, Andy Stern, saying in an interview that he and other major unions
coordinated closely on card check.
The legislation's chief sponsor, Sen.
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), is trying to fashion a modified bill that can win the
needed 60 votes.
One possible compromise: Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.), a former cosponsor who now has reservations about the bill, would
retain the card-signing process for workers to form unions. But, to ease
concerns about coercion, she proposes that workers mail the cards to a third
party rather than turn them in at the workplace.
tom.hamburger@latimes.com