Chamber's Efforts Set Back Union's Top Priority

Amy Sherman, president and CEO of the West Chamber in Jefferson County, Colorado, presents Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) with a signed petition opposing card check.

The U.S. Chamber's massive, multifaceted grassroots lobbying campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card  check, appears to be swaying minds on Capitol Hill-though the battle is far from over.

Card check would effectively eliminate National Labor Relations Board-supervised private ballot elections in union organizing campaigns, put government arbitrators in charge of making fundamental business decisions, and impose one-sided penalties.

Just two weeks after a group of 70 small business owners from Pennsylvania visited his office as part of a Chamber-organized fly-in opposing card check, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) announced publicly that he could not support the bill. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) came out against the legislation just days later. Without Specter's and Lincoln's support, card check advocates will find it difficult to muster the 60 votes necessary to break a possible Senate filibuster.

However, labor unions have not given up on card check and are pumping millions of dollars into a campaign to pass the bill. In addition, there has been talk of compromise proposals that might produce card check "lite."

Steven Law, the U.S. Chamber's chief legal officer and general counsel, likens the political situation to two basketball players fighting over the ball. "It's a jump ball at this point," he says. However, the fact that card check has fewer co-sponsors than it did last year and has failed to garner a vote in either the House or the Senate is evidence of the Chamber's success so far.

The Chamber has pulled out all the stops in opposing the bill, including holding two Workforce Freedom Airlifts, or fly-ins, in March. Hundreds of small business owners and local chamber officials from 12 states came to Washington to lobby against the bill. A third fly-in featuring delegates from Indiana, California, Wisconsin, and South Dakota is scheduled for early June.

"It says a lot when people are willing to leave their businesses, their families, and their communities in the middle of an economic crisis to come to Washington to speak out on a really important national issue," adds Law.

The Chamber also launched a $1 million television ad campaign in five pivotal states to educate the public on card check's harmful binding arbitration provision. Moreover, through the Chamber's Virtual March on Washington, more than 14,000 supporters have enlisted in the fight against card check, and the Chamber has generated more than 53,000 letters and hundreds of calls to members of Congress.

The card check bill would establish an open-ended process in which workers would be forced to decide publicly, in the presence of union organizers and supporters, whether or not to join a union. A union would be certified if more than half the employees signed the card. Because card check would make it faster, easier, and cheaper for unions to take over a workplace, small businesses would be particularly vulnerable.

The bill would also allow for binding interest arbitration by government-appointed arbitrators if the union and employer could not agree on terms of a first contract within 120 days. This less publicized provision of the bill would tie the hands of employers and workers and would "preclude any reasonable contract from getting done," says Brett Parker, CFO of Strike Holdings LLC, a bowling and entertainment company in Maryland.

Finally, card check would increase penalties against employers for violations of the National Labor Relations Act during union organization campaigns but would not increase penalties against unions.

The Chamber will continue to make the case to the American people and their elected representatives that card check is a bad idea in a good economy and an even worse idea in an economic downturn.

Fight against card check at secretballot.voteforbusiness.net/join.php.