The real issue in the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act

[dcsmart]

In an interview with the Washington Post a week before his inauguration, Barack Obama addressed the Employee Free Choice Act and the idea of card-check recognition for labor unions (emphasis added):

I think the basic principal of making it easier and fairer for workers who want to join a union, join a union is important. And the basic outline of the Employee Fair Choice are ones that I agree with. But I will certainly listen to all parties involved including from labor and the business community which I know considers this to be the devil incarnate. I will listen to parties involved and see if there are ways that we can bring those parties together and restore some balance.

You know, now if the business community’s argument against the Employee Free Choice Act is simply that it will make it easier for people to join unions and we think that is damaging to the economy then they probably won’t get too far with me. If their arguments are we think there are more elegant ways of doing this or here are some modifications or tweaks to the general concept that we would like to see. Then I think that’s a conversation that not only myself but folks in labor would be willing to have.

These comments are significant, not so much because they reaffirm Obama’s support for the EFCA, but because they indicate that he recognizes the real issue at stake in the debate over the bill. It is not–as opponents misleadingly suggest–a disagreement over means (card-check v. secret ballots), but a fundamental dispute about ends: whether federal law should make it easier for workers to join unions.
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http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/the-real-issue/#more-2216

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