By Harry Kelber
'The Labor Educator'

U.S. Senate Republicans were able to block an up-and-down vote on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), where the measure had a slim majority of 51 to 48, by using the closure rule that required the votes of as many as 60 senators before EFCA could be voted on.

The Senate decision on June 26 effectively negated action by the House, which had previously approved Employee Free Choice by 241 to 186.

Even if by some miracle, Congress had approved the pro-union legislation, President George Bush had promised his corporate allies that he would veto it. And clearly there were not enough votes in either the Senate or the House to override his veto.

The core of labor's campaign for EFCA was that workers were fearful of exercising their right to join a union, because they could face intimidation, harassment and loss of their jobs. Labor leaders, in effect, indicated that their ability to organize major corporations and institutions depended on Congress enacting legal restraints on the behavior of anti-union employers. There is ample evidence that many unions put their organizing plans on hold, waiting for the supposed advantages of an EFCA law.

We lost EFCA, but labor leaders are claiming victory

In a statement immediately following the Senate defeat of the Employee Free Choice Act, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, almost jubilantly, "Working people came out of this vote with growing momentum." He also called it a "watershed achievement" and "an important step toward shoring up our nation's struggling middle class."

Anna Burger, Chair of Change to Win (another labor coalition), was as cheerful as Sweeney in assessing the Senate vote. She said: "The historic vote is proof that momentum is building up to win real change for America's workers. Today's vote is a step toward creating a new American Dream for working people."

In general, union leaders tended to emphasize the positive aspects of their EFCA campaign, particularly the favorable vote in the House and the 51-48 majority in the Senate, and they were full of praise for union members who had sent supporting e-mails to their representatives in Washington,

But after the face-saving, self-congratulating reaction has subsided, the grim fact remains: labor lost the EFCA campaign. The net effect of the Senate's action is to doom the Employee Free Choice Act for at least until when the next Congress meets in 2009. And even if the Democrats win the White House, they face a formidable task in electing a 60-member majority in the Senate to beat the cloture rule. But what if they fail? What then? Will that mean the end of large scale organizing campaigns? What will unions do for working people if they feel helpless without an EFCA to lean on?

Do the AFL-CIO and Change to Win have a Plan B to move us forward in case Employee Free Choice is not in the cards? Or will it be the same "business as usual" that has contributed to our decline in numbers and bargaining power? We're entitled to know.