“If this bill doesn’t pass, don’t be surprised if you see card check,” he was quoted by the Columbus Dispatch as saying, referring to the proposed union-organizing tactic that labor opponents falsely claim would strip workers of the secret ballot.

“That might be the next thing; you just don’t know,” he added.

Yet in suggesting that scenario, Kasich is comparing apples to oranges: Whether or not SB5 is defeated in Ohio, the process for unionizing private sector employees will not change –- unless those changes come from the federal level.

Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, to form a union at a private business, workers must gain the signatures of at least 30 percent of the company’s employees. Once that milestone is reached, the National Labor Relations Board oversees a secret ballot election that decides whether or not a union is formed at the company.

Alternatively, if employees can garner the signatures of 50 percent of the workforce, a business owner can simply choose to accept the union and bypass the secret ballot election. That, however, rarely happens. In fact, workers oftentimes face intense lobbying and intimidation ahead of the election.

Under card check, employees have more power: Once workers meet the 50 percent threshold with signatures, they could choose to bypass the election and automatically form a union. If they received the signatures of between 30 percent and 50 percent of the workforce, it would still automatically trigger a secret ballot election.

Card check has been included in the Employee Free Choice Act three times. Introduced on the federal level in 2005, 2007 and 2009, the Act has never garnered the votes necessary to pass both chambers of Congress. The closest it came was in 2007, when it fell nine votes short of the 60 necessary to invoke cloture and break a Republican filibuster.

“Workers like firefighters and police officers didn’t ask for this fight,” said Melissa Fazekas, a spokesperson for We Are Ohio, a citizen-driven, community-based, bipartisan coalition that has come together to repeal SB5. “Governor Kasich and the politicians who support his out of touch policies like Issue 2 should be concerned about their attempts to destroy the middle class.

“Governor Kasich should embrace hardworking middle class Ohioans rather than continuing to insult and attack them.”

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.

The news really hit during a panel on “Forced Unionization,” with panelists quick to point out that “a vote for cloture is a vote for EFCA.” Attendees seemed to know that. When conservative new media guru David All asked his audience (at “Social Networking 101: Twitter and Facebook”) if they heard about the “breaking news about Arlen Specter on Twitter,” several people shouted “he’s going to vote yes on cloture!” Specter’s decision turned into an example of how to hashtag tweets and spread news and messaging.

Groups like the Workforce Fairness Institute, which had been a little somnolent lately as chances of a 2009 EFCA vote faded, are blasting out links to Specter’s previous stances on the issue. In March, TWI broke the news that Specter would filibuster card check.

It’s a moderate’s world on Capitol Hill right now, and the latest evidence arrived yesterday when the Democratic sponsors of a controversial labor-friendly proposal dropped the bill’s central tenet: A provision allowing unions to organize by getting a simple majority of workers to sign cards in support. Under current law, workers organize unions by secret ballot. The Democrats’ proposal would have given workers the additional option of a public ballot, making it easier to unionize.

The so-called “card check” bill — supported by President Obama — has been labor’s biggest legislative priority this year, prompting a fierce battle with business groups that have spent bill millions to kill the measure. Moderate Democrats like Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) have come out squarely in opposition to the bill, making the party’s 60-member majority irrelevant. Yesterday, those moderates won an enormous concession with the removal of the card-check provision. From The New York Times:

In its place, several Senate and labor officials said, the revised bill would require shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections.

While disappointed with the failure of card check, union leaders argued this would still be an important victory because it would give companies less time to press workers to vote against unionizing.

The move might have changed the support dynamics on Capitol Hill, but it hasn’t changed the lobbying dynamics. Indeed, labor groups are still supporting the underlying bill — the Employee Free Choice Act — while many businesses are still opposing it. The Workforce Fairness Institute, a business group formed to fight EFCA, just shot out an email announcing its continued opposition based on language that forces government arbitration when workers and employers can’t agree on a union contract.

“The most damaging aspect of the bill — the binding arbitration provision, will remain intact,” the group rued.

With Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) suffering poor health, there’s no guarantee that even the diluted proposal can win 60 Senate votes.

I have known Senator Specter for more than a quarter-century.  He has always been a man of honor and integrity, and a fine public servant.

Senator Specter and I have had a long dialogue about his place in an evolving Republican Party.  We have not always agreed on every issue, but Senator Specter has shown a willingness to work in a bipartisan manner, put people over party, and do what is right for Pennsylvanians and all Americans.

I welcome Senator Specter and his moderate voice to our diverse caucus, and to continuing our open and honest debate about the best way to make life better for the American people.

The news, of course, is causing pandemonium in Washington, where the knee-jerk reaction has been one of wild optimism among Democrats that the switch will somehow be the magic wand that automatically means success for the party’s legislative priorities. Reid’s tempered statement seems to recognize that this won’t be the case on all issues. Indeed, Specter has already made clear that he still plans to oppose the union-friendly Employee Free Choice Act.

Indeed, in his statement, Specter ruled out revisiting his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

With the 100-day anniversary just one week away, it’s notable that almost all of Obama’s accomplishments so far have been rhetorical, rather than policy-based.

Let’s see … there was the passage of the stimulus bill, the passage of the SCHIP bill, the Afghan surge, the various abortion and stem cell executive orders, etc. and etc.

Now, there have been high-profile setbacks, like the Employee Free Choice Act stalemate and the slow-walking of health care as (in part) a function of President Obama’s troubled nominees, and a case can be made that President George W. Bush had a better first 100 days (the Jim Jeffords switch did not happen until May), but any attempt to equate Obama’s huge rhetorical PR blitzes with a lack of accomplishments is sort of foolish. Republicans are getting rolled on most of the president’s priorities.

From her statement released yesterday:

I consider both the labor and the business communities to be my friends. However, now that we need all hands on deck, including business and labor, to get our economy moving again, this issue is dividing us. While I may not have been clear about my position in the past, I am stating today that I cannot support Employee Free Choice Act in its current form and I can’t support efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form.

It must be a coincidence that Arkansas-based Wal-Mart — which has donated $38,500 to Lincoln over her career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — is among the loudest opponents of both the estate tax and card check, right?

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TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) (WDCpix)

While a small group of conservative activists and journalists sat down for lunch at the University Club in downtown Washington, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform got a phone call from Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Penn.) chief of staff, Scott Hoeflich. Specter—the moderate Republican who had once co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for labor unions to organize—had changed his mind. Norquist led off his short speech with the news.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“He will be announcing today,” Norquist said, “this afternoon, that he will be voting against cloture and against card check.”

The room erupted with applause. James Sherk, who had been working against EFCA at the conservative Heritage Foundation, pumped his fist. With a maximum of 59 Democrats in support of the bill—assuming Al Franken is seated in Minnesota and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) is well enough to cast a vote—EFCA needed one Republican. Specter was the only Republican senator to support a similar measure in 2007.

“We may have dodged a bullet here,” said Norquist. “If this was 55 [Democrats], maybe the business community would never have woken up before the next election. But cleverly, we brought the Democrats so close that they thought they had us by the neck.”

The Employee Free Choice Act has been the target of one of the most intense lobbying campaigns in recent political history, an effort that has moved from the airwaves of battleground states into meetings where small labor and business groups pleaded for the swing voter, Specter, to take their side. On Tuesday, anti-EFCA activists all but declared victory, pronouncing the current bill “dead’ in the Senate. While some worries remain over Specter’s statement against the bill, and some disagreements are heating up over the strategy to block more labor reforms, there is a sense that the campaign against EFCA has made passage of the current version of the bill impossible.

“Ding, dong, the bill is dead,” said Matthew Vadum, a senior editor of the Capital Research Center, the conservative think tank that organized the conference. During a break, Vadum rushed to post the news at CRC’s web site: “Specter Kills Card Check.”

Specter’s EFCA switch will have an immediate impact on his re-election prospects. Ever since Specter co-sponsored EFCA in 2007, conservatives have threatened challenging him in the June 2010 Republican primary. Victory in that primary had looked more distant since more than 100,000 Republicans, most of them longtime supporters of Specter from the suburbs of Philadelphia, quit the party in the run-up to last year’s elections. The senator took another hit when Pat Toomey, the Club for Growth president who came within 17,000 votes of beating Specter in the 2004 primary, strongly suggested that he would enter this race.

For weeks, Specter had been approached by unions, including the AFL-CIO and the SEIU, that hinted at supporting him if he voted for EFCA—especially if Specter left the GOP and became an independent or a Democrat. But in his statement, asked to “end the rumor mill that I have made some deal for my political advantage.”

“This was a blunder on the part of the unions,” said Barbara Comstock, a Republican lawyer who is now running for the House of Delegates in Virginia. Comstock suggested that “thuggish” union behavior had backfired by making a pro-EFCA vote look like political opportunity, instead of an act of bi-partisan courage. “They really did their pay-to-play, [Blagojevich]-type politics.”

“Specter enjoys being the center of attention,” said Ernest Istook, a former congressman from Oklahoma who now chairs Save Our Secret Ballot, a group that’s trying to pass state ballot initiatives pre-empting any labor reform that would allow unions to form without secret ballot elections. He was less charitable about Specter’s decision. “There has probably been more money spent to influence his vote on this issue than on any other vote, from any other senator, at any other time. He wants to continue enjoying the attention and the fundraising opportunity.”

Istook told fellow anti-EFCA activists that Specter’s decision was a reason for “joy.” Elaine Chao, who served as George W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor for two terms, had a more tentative reaction. “It’s very positive,” said Chao, “but so long as this continues to foment, and third way options continue to come up, this is not dead. This is the number one issue of organized labor.” Chao pointed to a proposal from Costco, Starbucks, and Whole Foods, which was officially announced today by former Clinton White House Counsel Lanny Davis, to demonstrate that the issue isn’t dead.

Greg Mourad, the legislative director of National Rights at Work, worried about the timing of Specter’s decision so close to the announcement of the “third way” proposed by Davis. “The people I’m talking to are saying, ‘Why now?’” said Mourad. Thumbing his Blackberry and reading Specter’s statement, he worried that Specter only said that “this is the wrong time for this bill, not that he opposes in principle.”

Business groups loudly opposed the Davis proposal as soon as word of it leaked over the weekend. Norquist said that he’d met with business leaders who wanted conservatives to boycott Starbucks, Costco, and Whole Foods to show solidarity and nip the proposal in the bud. Now that Specter has “given us 41 votes,” said Norquist, there was no reason for any proposal to get a hearing.

“There’s nothing in this bill worth having,” said Norquist. “Conceding that anything in the bill is harmless is a mistake. None of it is any good.”

Conservatives pointed out that Specter’s decision to cross the unions had almost certainly ended any chance that they would support him, even if he voiced support for some sort of compromise bill. During the final panel of the CRC conference, Mourad sparred with Istook over the wisdom of keeping up anti-EFCA ballot fights in the states.

“We should oppose anything that gives Democrats cover to support this,” Mourad said. “We don’t want sow confusion and suggest that states can actually pre-empt EFCA, if some kind of bill does come up.”

Norquist, Mourad, and several other activists looked ahead—if there were 41 votes locked in against EFCA, it would help Republicans to hold a vote and put Democrats on the record before the 2010 elections.

“This is not a time to hibernate,” said Istook, “to go back to sleep, and to say we’ll deal with it in 2011 after the next elections. We must be dedicated to remain active, and to keep this issue alive.”