Labor votes

The House will vote tomorrow on Rep. George Miller’s (D-Calif.) Employee Free Choice Act. The occasion will throw Washington’s new ideological and political landscape into sharp relief.

The bill, H.R. 800, which is expected to pass, makes it easier for organized labor to unionize workforces. If it became law, it would allow a workforce to be unionized without a secret ballot if labor organizers collected the signatures from a majority of employees backing such a move.

Supporters argue that this allows workers to secure the benefits of unionization without being forced to jump through an expensive hoop, and thus demolishes an unwarranted obstacle to labor rights.

Opponents counter that eliminating secret ballots will allow union leaders to find out who is and who is not backing them, and so exposes workers to intimidation and is fundamentally undemocratic.

That such a measure should come up for a vote at all, let alone so early in the Congress, is a measure of how the agenda has changed following the Democrats’ victory on Nov. 7 in the midterm elections. But a change in the agenda does not mean there will be a swift change in labor law itself. Business leaders are fairly confident that the legislation will fail to muster a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. And even if it does, President Bush has said he will veto it.

Congressional action on the legislation will, however, put down markers that will be used in the next congressional elections, 20 months away. Most interesting will be to see how this plays out for centrist Republicans in the Northeast.

Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.) retained his seat with 51 percent of the vote and the help of $88,000 in donations from unions. A few days after the election, Kuhl withdrew his name from the list of cosponsors of the union bill.

He has not explained his decision, despite several requests for comment from The Hill. Perhaps he was justifiably miffed that the AFL-CIO endorsed his opponent, Democrat Eric Massa. If so, it would be tit-for-tat: The AFL-CIO explained its endorsement, saying Kuhl had become less friendly toward unions since joining Congress.

But which way will Kuhl vote? It would be odd to withdraw cosponsorship and then vote for the bill. On the other hand, voting against the bill would likely guarantee that he gets little more from the source of that $88,000.

It has been said that the partisanship of Congress over the past generation is due to the fact that neither party has a lock on either chamber; there is everything to fight for, so they fight over everything. The situation in competitive congressional seats is similar. Because they could go either way, no stone is left unturned for votes, and no bad turn is left unstoned.