I’m wondering if this is what Mark Warner has been saying to himself for the last two months.
Jeff Schapiro reports that the Senator met with 200 business leaders and lobbyists in Richmond today who urged him to oppose the “card check” legislation. Outside, 40 union members marched in the rain, holding signs asking Warner to support it.
The Employee Free Choice Act would make it far easier for unions to organize by removing an up or down vote by employees in a secret ballot as an essential feature of the process and substitute the accumulation of the requisite number of signatures on “authorization cards” distributed by union supporters.
After the meeting, Warner’s office issued a statement noting “this issue has stirred strong feelings on both sides. Senator Warner will continue to listen and to work with the business community and labor to try to achieve an appropriate balance that does not give an unfair advantage to either side.”
The issue is a difficult one for Warner because his political identity has, in large part, been shaped by his beliefs that there is no inherent conflict between business and labor and that the most effective way of achieving progressive goals is often through the application of business principles.
When I was teaching at VCU, Warner wowed my students on a number of occasions by describing ways of enhancing teacher prestige and pay, addressing economic dislocation in southside and southwest Virginia, and providing health care to the underserved by incorporating modern business principles in the solution.
In both 2001 and 2008, Warner ran campaigns in which he had very strong labor backing and an extraordinary high level of support for a Democrat from the Virginia business community.
For many labor leaders who have watched banks get billions in bailouts, card check is a way to give them more influence and power on a playing field that they believe has been increasingly tilted against them.
But whenever I have spoken to a business group in the last year, I am invariably asked something like this.
“How do you think Warner will vote on card-check? He’s told us that he wants to go to go to the Senate and be a “radical centrist” building bipartisan coalitions. But will he really be able to do this? Can he tell Harry Reid and Chris Dodd no?”
I often get the sense that for many business leaders Warner’s vote on a card-check is not only a litmus-test political issue, but a character test as well.
Maybe the Senate GOP will filibuster the issue so that Warner never has to vote? Or perhaps there can be some compromise where, as Warner observes, the “appropriate balance” can be struck. But at a time when the majority of his Democratic colleagues simply believe that it’s time to stand up for labor, this has to be the most uncomfortable moment of Warner’s young Senate career.
One final word.
Given the emotion surrounding card check, it’s not surprising that Bob McDonnell is working to make it a central issue in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign. From the GOP perspective, they would like to see the angst that Warner is experiencing felt by the entire Democratic party.
All the Democratic gubernatorial candidates have pointed out that card check is a federal issue and is not, in their minds, a matter that really pertains to the question of who is best suited to be the next Governor.
But if McDonnell succeeds in making it an issue, he could have his Democratic opponent muttering, “card check, card check, go away…”
First, let’s call the bill what it is, the employee free choice act. And next let’s talk about what it actually does.
This would give employees the choice in how they form their union. This will simply allow the employees to decide if they want majority sign up or an election. This is because normally employers fire or intimidate their pro-union employees to make sure that the vote goes in their favor.
Next, once a majority of employees say they want to form a union, their employers have to recognize that and negotiate instead of dragging it on for years.
Finally, the Employee Free Choice Act puts real teeth into laws protecting workers. If you are fired currently for wanting to organize(part of the first amendment if I remember correctly), it is a lengthy process to file with the NLRB and the employer only has to pay the difference of any pay you may receive from a new job.