thetruthaboutefca.com | The Truth About The Employee Free Choice Act & Card Check

Thomas Edsall has some tough-love analysis for organized labor and its on-again, really-on-again love affair with Democratic politicians. In the National Journal, he writes:

If there is one Democratic constituency that has taken a beating with the rising influence of Democrats from the high-tech sector and the ranks of the nation’s professionals, it is organized labor. As labor leaders attempt to capitalize on Democratic control of the White House to win approval of key legislation, they face opposition from Democratic representatives and senators from places with declining or nonexistent union membership and indifference from the party’s upscale Starbucks faction, which seemingly could not care less about the future of the labor movement.

As a result, union leaders have been unable to push through a central goal: the “card-check” provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Senate is on the verge of killing card check, which would replace union representation elections using secret ballots with a system guaranteeing union recognition once a majority of employees sign cards affirming their support. For years, card check has been the be-all and end-all for Big Labor, which sees it as crucial to its survival.

Few interest groups have been a better friend to the party than labor. Not only do unions donate millions to Democrats — $617.6 million since 1990, 12 times the amount they gave to Republicans — but for the past decade, they have also been able to persuade their members, including whites, to vote decisively for Democrats.

Past loyalty, however, counts for little in today’s Democratic Party. The harsh reality facing unions is that they are fading as a force in America politics, and fellow Democrats know it. Since the 2002 enactment of McCain-Feingold legislation barring soft-money contributions, labor donations in federal campaigns have fallen from $96.8 million in 2001-02 to $74.6 million in 2007-08. More important, the number of unionized workers, and their share of the national workforce, has been on a steady downward path since 1955, when 35 percent of U.S. workers were represented by a union. By 2008, that percentage had dropped to 13.7.

Mr. Edsall clearly has valid points on organized labor’s large-dollar donation angle and the sway that it tries to use that influence with respect to card check. But it would be unwise to assume that union officials will not get many items on their wish list — items that will come at a heavy expense to an already-battered economy and tens of millions of working Americans.

Let’s hope he’s right about the fate of card check. But hope is not a plan, so it’s critical to keep engaged in the fight against card check and the rest of the disastrous Employee Free Choice Act.

Tags: Dues