Senate Majority Backs Employee Free Choice Act: GOP Filibuster Blocks Passage — For Now

The U.S. Senate's majority support for the Employee Free Choice Act this summer — though the measure was blocked by a GOP-lead filibuster — shows what unions can and will accomplish in 2009 after America's working families elect a pro-worker president and gain more seats in Congress, CWA President Larry Cohen said.

"This was a terrific accomplishment.  We can all be proud of the role CWA played in getting all 51 votes on the Senate floor, as well as the overwhelming majority we won in the House in March," Cohen said after the Senate vote in late June.

 "Our members, staff and officers went all out, as did other unions, and clearly demonstrated to Congress that a majority of Americans support organizing and bargaining rights," he said. "A year ago, no one would have imagined that we could have gotten majority congressional support for this bill in the face of enormous opposition from corporate lobbyists."

Cohen said the challenge now is to focus with even more intensity on the 2008 elections and to work closely with "every imaginable ally" from Jobs with Justice and American Rights at Work and faith-based, civil rights and other progressive groups.

"We are going to spend the next year and half pouring our energy and passion and outrage into electing a president and new members of Congress who will stand up for American workers and their right to join a union and bargain collectively," he said. "And when we do, the Employee Free Choice Act will become law."

The Senate voted 51-48 to for cloture, the process of ending a filibuster — extended debate — by a bill's opponents and calling a vote on the bill itself. Cloture, however, requires 60 votes, meaning a simple majority isn't enough support. Had it passed, President Bush vowed to veto it.

In urging the Senate to pass the bill, CWA and other union members nationwide generated 50,000 phone calls,156,000 faxes and e-mail messages, and 220,000 postcards,  according to the AFL-CIO.  The day that senators began debating the bill, about 4,500 union members including many from CWA turned out for a Capitol Hill rally across from the Senate chamber. A similar campaign helped propel the Employee Free Choice Act through the U.S. House, where it passed 241-185 in March.

Cohen laid out three specific steps that CWA will take to ensure that the bill ultimately passes in both houses of Congress:

1. Continue to educate union households and the public about the decline of collective bargaining and the need to restore bargaining and organizing rights.
2. Elect a president in 2008 who will lead the effort to enact this legislation.
3. Develop strategies in the Senate that allow for passage of the Employee Free Choice

Act with majority support instead of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate. This is the strategy that was used to enact the first increase in the minimum wage in 10 years by including the measure in an appropriations bill.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who sponsored the bill in the Senate, made an impassioned speech on its behalf before the cloture vote. Later he admonished GOP members for abandoning working Americans — with the noted exception of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the only Republican to vote for the bill.

"I am proud that a majority of my colleagues stood up for working families. I regret that more of my Republicans colleagues do not share this vision for a better America," Kennedy said. "Although we were blocked today we will not give up and we will not give in. I can promise that we will be back. There may be obstacles along the way, but we'll keep up the fight until we get a victory for working families."