LAT: Congress to consider how unions organize

[DeepModem Mom]

Congress to consider how unions organize
Legislation would allow labor leaders to unionize a workplace without an election.
By Joe Mathews, Times Staff Writer
February 26, 2007

Choose your weapon: cards or ballots?

It has become the central question in union organizing fights across the country: Will the employer recognize a union after a majority of its workers sign union cards? Or will the employer insist that its workers cast secret ballots in federally supervised elections?

These questions — of paper and power — move from the workplace to Congress this week, when the House is scheduled to cast the first vote in what could be a years-long legislative battle between the country's largest labor unions and most powerful business lobbies.

The stakes: deciding the manner in which Americans join unions.

The proposed Employee Free Choice Act would take from employers the right to decide whether to accept the signing of cards — generally called "card check" — or demand an election. Instead, a workplace could unionize if labor persuaded a majority of employees to sign cards — without an election of all employees....

***

For both sides, the battle represents something of a role reversal and offers a window on the important but odd details of labor law.

Unions and their political allies, which for 70 years championed the secret ballot for unionizing workers, are all but abandoning the election process, arguing that aggressive anti-union tactics by businesses make such elections too difficult and costly.

And business leaders, generally hostile to any government intervention in their companies, are preparing to spend millions to defend federal supervision of elections in which workers choose whether to unionize....

The House is expected to approve the legislation as soon as Thursday, but Senate prospects are less certain.

Even if the bill passes Congress, President Bush has pledged to veto it....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-labor26feb26,0,2302131.story?coll=la-home-nation