WASHINGTON (PAI) – Minnesota’s new Democratic U.S. Senator, Al Franken, marked his first day in office on July 7 by signing on as a co-sponsor to a bill for the first time: The Employee Free Choice Act.

In doing so, Franken symbolized the hopes of workers that he would be the 60^th vote needed to shut off a planned GOP filibuster aimed at killing the bill, which is labor’s top legislative priority.  Franken’s support has been awaited by the bill’s Senate backers to move it forward.

The Employee Free Choice Act would make it easier for workers to form unions and has been vigorously opposed by big business and business-backed front groups.

During the 2008 Senate campaign against then-incumbent Norman Coleman, R-Minn., Franken came under attack in a barrage of television ads, paid for by the Chamber  of Commerce and its allies, for his support of the Employee Free Choice Act.  Similar anti-EFCA ads, all targeting Democratic hopefuls, ran in other tight Senate races nationwide.  The Democrats won those races.  Franken’s was the tightest. 

“They (business) were going after him more than anyone,” recalled Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, whom Franken invited to Washington to witness the swearing-in ceremony.  “He didn’t back down then and he didn’t back down now,” McCarthy said.

Franken took office six months after other senators due to a mandatory ballot-by-ballot recount after the election, because it was so close, followed by court challenges from Coleman.  Franken won by 312 votes out of almost 3 million cast in a 3-way race.

Franken’s campaign championed interests of middle class families.  He maintained that enacting the Employee Free Choice Act is a way to strengthen the middle class, by giving more workers the opportunity to bargain collectively to improve wages and benefits.  He made the announcement about signing on as a co-sponsor of the bill at a reception that evening in his honor at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington.

“As of about half an hour ago, I became the co-sponsor of my first piece of legislation in the Senate.  And it’s something called the Employee Free Choice Act,” the Harvard Law graduate-turned-comedian-turned-senator deadpanned.