WASHINGTON — The labor unions that helped Barack Obama win the White House are looking for some payback.
Labor’s wish list for the incoming president and the expanded Democratic majority in Congress includes making it easier to form unions, expanding the pool of workers who can join them, prohibiting employers from permanently replacing striking workers and expanding health care.
Getting much of that, as one business leader puts it, won’t be “a walk in the park.”
Still, labor leaders are confident they’ll do better than in 1993, when Bill Clinton became president after 12 years of Republicans occupying the White House.
Back then, the Family and Medical Leave Act, which required employers to grant workers unpaid leave to care for ill children, spouses or parents, was signed into law in the early weeks of the new Clinton administration. But Clinton and the unions quickly parted ways over the North American Free Trade Agreement, complicating cooperation on his health-care plan, which ultimately failed.
Ross Eisenbrey, labor expert and vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said he expects the outcome to be different this time “because the labor movement has a clear agenda, and I think Obama shares it.”
While Obama’s support could help, unions’ diminishing membership has made it tough to get their legislation passed. Unions represent about one in every eight U.S. workers, down from about one in five 25 years ago.
The biggest labor-business donnybrook in the new Congress will be over a bill that would do away with employers’ right to demand secret-ballot elections to recognize unions. Instead, a company would have to recognize and bargain with a union once union cards were signed by 50 percent of the company’s eligible workforce plus one additional employee.
The House passed the measure in 2007, but it died under a Republican filibuster in the Senate. President Bush had vowed to veto it, but Obama made it part of his platform. Both sides plan to again spend millions of dollars on ads and lobbying for and against it, and the bill may suffer the same fate next year.
“It will be a very high-priority fight and a high-visibility, noisy fight,” Eisenbrey predicted.
Labor leaders say employers have used secret-ballot elections, generally held on job sites, to coerce and intimidate workers into rejecting unions. Employers counter that workers are often coerced by their peers to sign union cards and that a secret-ballot election is the only way to determine their true desires.
“We haven’t been bashful” about labor’s position, said Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO’s legislative director. “Nor has the business community.”
House Republican leader John Boehner wrote before the election that Obama’s support for the bill “should send a chill down the spine of every man and woman who treasures his or her privacy in the workplace.”
On the agenda
Among labor-related bills that could appear on the legislative calendar in 2009:
Secret ballots: Unions favor eliminating secret ballots to unionize. The House passed such a measure last year, but it was filibustered by Senate Republicans. President-elect Barack Obama, left, included it in his campaign platform.
Economic boost: Labor is counting on an extension of unemployment benefits and boosting infrastructure spending, including aid for the U.S. auto industry.
Minimum-wage increase: Congress approved a three-step, $2.10 increase last year. The minimum now is $6.55 an hour, and the last step, a 70-cent increase, will occur next summer.
Paycheck Fairness Act: Passed the House in July, but the White House threatened a veto and the bill never made it out of the Senate. Supporters said it was needed to close loopholes that allow employers to avoid responsibility for discriminatory pay.
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: Named for an Alabama woman whose pay-discrimination lawsuit was thrown out on a 5-4 Supreme Court vote in 2007. The court said she waited too long to sue. The House passed legislation to remove that time limit, but it hit a filibuster wall in the Senate.
Collective bargaining for safety workers: The House in 2007 passed such legislation for police and firefighters, but it stalled in the Senate.
“Kentucky River” rulings: Obama has supported legislation to overturn the National Labor Relations Board’s 2006 rulings that classified employees, such as nurses, as supervisors if they direct a co-worker 10 percent of the workday. Labor says the rulings could interfere with rights to join unions.
Discrimination: The House last November passed legislation to end workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Senate did not act.
