EFCA Update

To: All Members of the US Chamber’s Labor Relations Committee and other interested members of the business community

From: Randy Johnson, Senior Vice President, Labor, Immigration, and Employee Benefit

Mike Eastman, Executive Director, Labor Law Policy

As you may have seen by now, this morning the New York Times ran a story discussing EFCA and the development of alternative legislation. We have received many inquiries about this story and wanted to take this opportunity to offer our perspective.

First the good news, the Senate does not currently have the 60 votes necessary to move EFCA. This is due to several factors, including the delicate issue of the health of Senators Byrd and Kennedy and also the fact that a handful of key Democrats are opposed to moving EFCA and no Republicans have been receptive to recent overtures for them to change their minds on the bill.

Nevertheless, for the past several weeks a key group of Democratic senators including Sens. Specter, Harkin, Pryor, Brown, and others have been exploring whether they can create an alternative to EFCA that might attract 60 votes. Many rumors have circulated about possible provisions that would be included in such an alternative including: quick elections, voting by mail or electronically, access of non-employee union organizers to the workplace, greater restrictions on employer free speech, modifying the interest arbitration provisions to use “baseball” style final offer arbitration, lengthening the time period before arbitration could be invoked, and so on.

Unions have indicated they will not accept an alternative to EFCA that is not true to EFCA’s core principles – in fact, there are several news sources now reporting that in response to this morning’s NYT story, labor leaders are emphasizing that they have not signed on to any alternative bill. In addition, reports are that the SEIU’s Andy Stern and others are pledging that both the House and the Senate will be forced to take a vote on card check regardless of what provisions wind up in the alternative.

The bottom line here is that it continues to be critically important that the business community continue to remind Senators why EFCA is an awful bill and why they proposed alternatives cannot work. Towards this end, the Chamber is launching another grass roots effort (which you should expect to see on Monday) and we encourage you to undertake similar efforts.