Though there was talk of a “nuclear option” in the debate over health insurance legislation, the biggest Beltway battle in years may still lie ahead.  read more »

President Barack Obama owes a lot to the unions. It’s no secret that labor spent massively on his behalf during the presidential election last year and directed a tsunami of voters to the polls. Union foot soldiers helped make the difference for him in places like Ohio and other hard-hat-rich swing states.  read more »

Debates over the economic stimulus and health care reform have tied up the labor movement's energy for much of the first year of the Obama administration, sidelining its No. 1 target agenda item, the Employee Free Choice Act. Next year, unions are looking to pass the legislation, which they say would make it easier for workers to join unions and curtail abuses that were ignored under the Bush administration.  read more »

The Globe and Mail  A pitched lobbying battle between Big Business and Big Labour over legislation that would make it much easier for workers to organize is shaping up as the first major test of U.S. President Barack Obama's loyalty to the unions who helped elect him. And like the raging debate about reforms to U.S. health care, the Canadian experience has become a rallying cry for business groups that want the proposed legislation stopped in its tracks. At issue is the "card-check" bill, which would mandate automatic recognition of a union once half the members of a work force signed a membership card - a model that Canadian provinces have gradually been moving away from since the 1980s.  read more »

Visalia Times-Delta So few California farm laborers are unionized that most growers have paid little attention to the "card check" issue now before the state Legislature. The scheme to allow workers to pledge themselves to a union without going through the secret election process has been introduced for the third consecutive year. Both previous attempts were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The matter is of infinitely greater concern this time because extreme pressure is being applied by national unions and many Democratic lawmakers to establish a similar system at the national level.  read more »

The Hill Jobs. They're the heart of our economic engine, transforming to meet the new realities of a changing global marketplace. They're also a trusted barometer of economic health, and judging by employment figures, our economy remains far from healthy. It's clear that America needs an economic policy that will create jobs. And it's even clearer that we don't need policies that will hamper innovation or make it harder for American businesses, large and small, to keep and create new jobs. That's why the card-check plan - euphemistically dubbed the Employee Free Choice Act, although it offers employees anything but - is exactly the wrong elixir for what ails our economy.  read more »

Washington Post  Compromise for the sake of compromise often leads to bad public policy, and efforts to reach a compromise on the union "card check" bill fall into this category. The issue here is that unions are declining because they don't serve the needs of today's workers, but instead of admitting that, labor is trying to save itself by unfairly changing the rules.  read more »

The Hill   John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO, recently took to the pages of The Hill to make a full-throated push for the Employee Free Choice Act (op-ed, "A strong economy is a more equal one," Feb. 11). The act is an anti-worker, job-killing piece of legislation that will undercut the efforts of President Obama and Congress to stimulate the economy through fiscal policy. The bill will drive up labor costs for employers, especially small businesses, at a time when they can least afford it.   read more »

Front Page Magazine The Obama administration will make every effort to pass a key piece of pro-union legislation. The bill has a misleading label: The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). In the interest of truth in advertising, the bill should be called, "The Employee Intimidation Act."  read more »

  The Washington Post   Business and labor groups are intensifying their battle over a measure that would make it easier to organize unions, offering a preview of what is certain to be one of the earliest and hardest-fought legislative battles in the new Congress   read more »