Obama and EFCA.

Union bloggers, both teacher union bloggers and others, have been justifiably concerned that Obama stick to his promise to support the Employee Free Choice Act. The Act would allow workers to organize without jumping through the existing hoops that presently aid employers in keeping out unions.

Some have pointed to a recent interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post as an example of an Obama waffle. But given the way he has approached things his first week, I don’t see the waffle.

Let’s role the audiotape. Here’s what he said:

Here’s my basic principal that wages and incomes have flatlined over the last decade.  That part of that has to do with forces that are beyond everybody’s control: globalization, technology and so forth.  Part of it has to do with workers have very little leverage and that larger and larger shares of our productivity go to the top and not to the middle or the bottom.  I think unions serve an important role in that.  I think that the way the Bush Administration managed the Department of Labor, the NLRB, and a host of other aspects of labor management relations put the thumb too heavily against unions.  I want to lift that thumb.  There are going to be steps that we can take other than the Employee Free Choice Act that will make a difference there.

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 (my emphasis). 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.  But, so that’s the general approach that I am interested in taking. But in terms of time table, if we are losing half a million jobs a month then there are no jobs to unionize. So my focus first is on those key economic priority items that I just mentioned.

Given Obama’s “discuss, discuss, discuss, but I won” approach, I’m betting that he and Hilda are going to bat for the labor movement on this one.

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