Masonry Magazine April 2007 Page. 10
Government Affairs
Big Win for Labor May Never
See the Light of Day
Jessica Johnson Bennett,
Director of Government Affairs,
Mason Contractors Association of America
Organized labor turned out in big numbers on Nov. 7 and helped to propel Democrats back into power. Approximately 11.9 million union members came out to vote in the mid-term elections and more than three-quarters of them voted Democratic. It was no secret that the plight of the middle class was high on the domestic agenda during the mid-term campaigns, and it was clearly evident that Democrats would be true to campaign promises when they passed a bill last month that benefits organized labor in a big way.
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Masonry
April 2007
Union Secret-Ballot Elections
From 2000 through 2004,AFL-CIO union-organizing efforts succeeded more than half the time when the process included a National Labor Relations Board secret-ballot election
Year
Number of
Percent won
Total number of Union share of
elections held
by union
union workers total workforce
2000
2,855
51.0%
16,258,000
13.5%
2001
2,418
51.9
16,275,000
13.5
2002
2,501
54.9
16,146,000
13.3
2003
2,156
56.4
15,776,000
12.9
2004
2,159
56.1
15,472,000
12.5
SOURCES: The AFL-CIO and the Labor Research Association
On March 1, 2007, the House passed The Employee Free Choice Act of 2007. This bill, which would allow union organizers to bypass secret-ballot elections if they can gather a majority of eligible employees' signatures on a petition in support of union formation, passed in the House with an overwhelming majority vote of 241-185, with 13 Republicans voting for and only two Democrats voting against the bill. This legislation would require an employer to recognize a union as its employees' collective bargaining representative absent an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.
Democrats maintain that this legislation is in response to concerns of failing wages and rising health insurance costs. They hail the bill as a way to improve conditions for the working class by facilitating the creation and negotiation of labor unions. Quick passage of the bill is a demonstration of a vastly different political climate in Washington and organized labor's newfound clout in a Democratic-controlled Congress. However, the bill faces a near certain death in the Senate, where Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans, which would keep the Senate from taking a vote on the bill. Even if the bill should see the light of day in the Senate, President Bush has made the "power of the pen" very clear with his threat to veto the legislation should it arrive on his desk for signature. Also, even with the support of Republicans in the House, the vote count fell well short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a veto in that chamber.
Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and sponsor of the legislation, said, "The Employee Free Choice Act has a very simple purpose: To allow more Americans to choose, if they want to, to join their fellow employees in seeking better wages, better benefits and better working conditions."
"We are painfully aware, and even President Bush has publicly acknowledged, that the middle class in America is under the gun economically, fighting to pay the bills, fighting for health care, struggling to pay for college, and put aside a nest egg for their retirement," Miller continued. "They are working harder and harder just to keep up."
In addition to the fact that employers will no longer be able to insist on a secret-ballot election once organizers gather more than a majority of signa-
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