End the talk:build the bridge

Let’s build the bridge.

A proposal to build a new suspension bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario has been studied and debated for years,

It’s at the point now where approval for the proposed Detroit River Internatioal Crossing has been passed by the Michigan House, but is being held up in the state Senate by Majority Leader Mike Bishop, who questions the legality of the financial agreement between the State of Michigan and the government of Canada.

The Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council and a host of other politicians, pundits and newspaper editorialists are convinced that

the agreement is legal, and the $1.8 billion in construction work (U.S. side only) should proceed at once.

You can help. There’s a website at www.buildthedricnow.com, where you can contact your state legislator to convince him or her to support construction.

Votes not there for EFCA passage

The Employee Free Choice Act – organized labor’s top legislative priority – simply does not have enough votes as it is written to get passed in the U.S. Senate.

So said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to a legal conference on May 13, theConstruction Labor Report said. “We were within one vote,” in the Senate, Harkin said, but Republican Scott Brown won Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat this spring, which took away the 60-vote super-majority Dems held in the Senate. The House has already passed the bill.

The Employee Free Choice Act, if it’s ever passed, would make it easier for unions to organize. The EFCA would allow a majority of workers at a workplace to sign union cards to gain representation, rather than waiting for a formal ballot election. Often employers delay representation votes, allowing them time to coerce employees into not voting for the union.

Harkin, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told the audience that “he had not higher priority” than passing the EFCA.

That’s not the case with other Democratic senators, however, especially those from conservative states. A handful were publicly wavering on supporting the EFCA, after getting pressure from the business community. Republicans have voted nearly in lockstep against the pro-union measure.