Tuesday, December 22, 2009: EFCA Round-Up
At the Huffington Post, Sam Stein reports on Labor's current view of the administration in "Big Labor, Big Concerns: Obama's Approach Causing Tension." Set against the AFL-CIO's and SEIU's activities in the healthcare legislation deabte, the piece notes Labor's frustration with the President's "punting of the Employee Free Choice Act until 2010." Notes Stein:
Labor leaders are loath to publicly criticize Obama, in part because they remain acutely aware of the benefits of staying in his (and WH chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's) good favor. But in private, there is a growing "frustration," as one union official put it. And as it became clear that the Senate was settling on a health care bill that taxes high-end plans (which cover many union members as well as other workers) and includes no additional government-run plan for insurance, a hint of that frustration seeped to the surface.
"What I want the president to do is to work with the conferees on the issues that he has said from the very beginning are important to him and say we have a chance to get some of those done, particularly the ones that relate to making sure that people who don't have insurance will be able to afford what is made available," SEIU President Andy Stern declared in a conference call this past week. "We need his moral suasion. We need his personal involvement and we are totally convinced that what we want done is what he wants done. And all we can do is maximize the effort."
Implicit in the remark was that, up to this point, Obama had provided neither the "suasion" nor "involvement" needed in the debate. It was hardly the most controversial of statements. Indeed, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) echoed the sentiment days later. But coming from Stern -- the closest of the president's labor allies -- it was, as one union hand pointed out, "hard to dismiss."
Elsewhere, both the SEIU and the AFL-CIO delcared the U.S. Chamber of Commerce the "Scrooge of the Year," reporting on the "award" bestowed by union 501(c)(3) group, Jobs With Justice:
The Chamber has spent millions of dollars lobbying against legislation that would benefit workers and families like the Employee Free Choice Act....
The Chamber tweeted it's acceptance speech:
Union group names us "Scrooge of the Year" -- here is hoping we get it again in 2010 for more #efcafail (@jwjnational)
And The Truth About The EFCA blog links to this thorough 2009 re-cap of legislative opposition to the Act prepared by the House Committee on Education and Labor Republicans: "A Year's Worth Of Reasons Not To Enact EFCA."
