Senate Democrats drop “card check” measure from pending bill

The decision is a major defeat for the AFL-CIO and Change to Win. These organizations have plowed hundreds of millions of union workers’ membership dues into the election of Democrats in recent years. They had launched an intensive lobbying campaign to persuade “moderate” Democrats to support the card check measure, which the bureaucracy claimed was the most important labor legislation since passage of the Wagner Act in 1935.

The bill, formally known as the Employee Free Choice Act, was so associated with the card check provision it simply came to be called “the Card Check bill.” The AFL-CIO and Change to Win pushed the measure as a means of shoring up their dues base amidst a steady decline in the number of workers in these organizations.

The Senate Democrats who scrapped the measure, led by Tom Harkin of Iowa, determined that the bill, with the card check provision, could not achieve a filibuster-proof 60-senator majority after three or four conservative Democrats indicated their opposition. To make the bill more agreeable to these Democratic conservatives and some Republicans, Harkin and other Democratic senators involved in negotiations decided to drop the bill’s central component.

According to sources, Harkin also gained the agreement of AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern and Communications Workers of America president Larry Cohen, who have been involved in crafting the legislation.

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