Reading the Senate Tealeaves on the EFCA, part 2

Jonathan Tasini, who in 2006 became the executive director of Labor Research Association after a failed bid to unseat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in New York, decided to find out for himself why four Democratic Senators have failed to sign on as co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act. He detailed those efforts in The Huffington Post:

I spoke to Jim Stowers, legislative aide for [Senator Blanche] Lincoln [D-AR].
"She is in the process of listening to folks who have an opinion about the bill. She wants to make sure her constituents have a chance to be heard. She wants to allow people who support the bill and those who oppose the bill to weigh in."
There was more of that obfuscating and non-responsive replies but I'll spare you.
Tate Heuer from [Senator Mark] Pryor's [D-AR] office had a bit more to say:
"It's become a lot more controversial in our state than it was. Our phones are ringing quite a bit from Arkansans who are opposed to it."
Heuer admitted that the calls, which he said were 3-1 against the legislation, were predominately coming from the business community, which he says is doing a lot of "grassroots" work. At the end of the day, though, he says his boss will vote for the bill.

With respect to Senator Lincoln, we will stop to ask: Since when is listening to both sides of an issue a reason for rebuke? Some might expect the Executive Director of a RESEARCH organization to think it was a good thing. But it appears, at least in the case of Senator Pryor, that the way to gain favor with organized labor supporters is to ignore three-fourths of your constituents.

According to Mr. Tasini, the offices of Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) Nelson “didn't bother to return calls.” Mr. Tasini’s disgust with the responses he got from Senators Lincoln, Nelson, and Salazar are further indication that labor is not expecting to get their votes.

As interesting as those observations may be, they pale in comparison to Mr. Tasini’s concluding assertion:

There is only one reason tens of millions of workers are not in unions: employer intimidation and illegal behavior.

What? As noted above, Mr. Tasini is Executive Director of an organization that purports to provide RESEARCH. Remember, Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, is on record as admitting that “Most employers are not bad actors” and that only “a few employers . . . coerce employees without consequence.” Perhaps Mr. Tasini would be willing to share his “research” with Rep. Andrews and the rest of the world who are laboring under the assumption that over 92.5% of the nation’s private sector employees do not belong to unions because they choose not to.

UPDATE: Still struck by the casual way in which Mr. Tasini (and apparantly Senator Pryor) dismisses constituent calls against the Employee Free Choice Act as being "grassroots" efforts of the business community, we did some quick research on whether union supporters might have been engaging in a little grassroots work of their own during the EFCA debate. We discovered that "Thousands of AFT members, including retirees, attended rallies, telephoned and e-mailed House members to support the bill." But that's not all. It turns out that there have been a lot of efforts by unions and their friends to get people contact their elected officials. We wonder if Mr. Tasini would urge those officials to ignore communications that have been generated through the links listed below?

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 04:44PM by

EFCA Updates | Comments Off