WHITHER EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE?

Today, hundreds of union members and their leaders from across the labor spectrum gathered on Capitol Hill to deliver 1.5 million signed cards from people around the nation supporting the Employee Free Choice Act to members of congress. Leo Gerard, head of the United Steel Workers, acted as master of ceremonies, introducing other labor leaders, including the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney and Change to Win's Andy Stern, and Richard Trumka, the Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

The main focus of the event, however, was on several union members who had arrived in Washington to provide first-hand testimony about the problems of current labor law; some will be here lobbying on the Hill for several weeks. Several had been fired for their organizing activities, and talked about how Employee Free Choice Act would prevent that by giving workers the ability to by-pass the intimidation of an NLRB election process and increasing penalties on employers who violate labor law. Asela Espiritu, a nurse from California, came to speak about her successful organizing campaign at a Kaiser Permanente facility -- Kaiser recognizes majority sign-up as part of a national organizing neutrality agreement -- and the benefits that both management and employees accrued from having a union. Theo Jackson, who worked as a case manager at substance abuse clinic in California, was fired after he lead an organizing campaign through a successful election; now his case for wrongful firing is pending before the NLRB even as he and his colleagues fight for their first contract.

"I'm putting a face on all of the members," Jackson told me. "When companies do something, nobody knows, they want the people who get fired to slink away in shame. The very next day, I was in front of the gate, waving at the executive director."

Politically, it looks like both the House and Senate versions of the EFCA bill, which will not have substantially changed since the last attempt to pass it in 2007, will be introduced in the coming weeks, according to Senator Tom Harkin, who has been tasked by Senate Health Education and Labor Committee Chair Ted Kennedy with managing the bill, and Representative George Miller, the lead House sponsor. Walking to a Senate Democratic lunch with President Barack Obama, Harkin suggested the delay on introducing the legislation was related to Al Franken's continuing legal battle over Minnesota's senate election. The senator also expects the nomination of Hilda Solis for Secretary of Labor will clear the Senate before the Easter recess.

But the extent of the President Obama's participation in the run-up the legislation remains ambiguous; though both Harkin and Miller plan to pass the bill by the end of the year, Harkin framed the issue by quoting the president as saying, "You pass it, I'll sign it." Given that it will require a good deal of political capital to peel off the necessary votes for cloture, the current hands-off approach by the administration on this specific bill could raise concern among majority sign-up supporters, though labor officials and legislators remain confident in the president's support for the legislation.

-- Tim Fernholz