According to the Akron, Ohio Beacon-Journal this week, the Summit County Council voted to “encourage the U.S. Senate to support the bipartisan Employee Free Choice Act.”

One blogger commenting on the article makes an interesting observation about the use of the term “majority sign-up” instead of “card check”:

Funny, no mention about losing the right to a secret ballot. . . . Once you euphemize it to “majority sign up”, selling your birthright for a mess of union pottage doesn’t sound so bad, now does it?

The Beacon-Journal article also notes that “30 states, counties or cities have expressed support for the bill.”

Indeed, it seems that a new local government supporter is announced every day. While these entities have no power to enact the EFCA (private-sector organizing is governed exclusively by federal law), it does show that labor is certainly assembling a long line of politicians at every level to trot out when necessary. While the EFCA will likely die at least a temporary death sometime in 2007, labor’s newly rediscovered political power appears to be here for the long-term.

Meanwhile, AFL-CIO managing editor Tula Connell writes: Billions Spent Attacking Unions Could Be Better Spent on Decent Wages.