Labor nails big win as House passes bill

WASHINGTON -- Democrats rewarded organized labor Thursday for helping them retake control of Congress, passing a House bill that would make it easier for workers to start unions against companies' wishes.

The legislation, passed 241-185 on a nearly party-line vote, would take away employers' right to demand secret-ballot elections by workers before unions could be recognized.

"It's simply about establishing fairness in the workplace," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said the real issue was "taking care of union bosses."

The House action was the second triumph for labor after the Democratic takeover of Congress. The House and Senate also have voted on separate bills to raise the minimum wage.

Labor groups saw the Employee Free Choice Act as one way of halting the downward trend of union membership, now about 12 percent of the work force.

"This is easily the most significant congressional vote on labor issues in decades," said David Groves of the Washington State Labor Council. "This is about reforming broken labor laws in a real way for the first time since 1930s. There's nothing that was a higher priority for organized labor than this bill."

About 548,500 Washington state workers had union representation in 2006. That's just under 20 percent of the state labor force, well above the national average.

All six of the state's Democratic representatives were among the 233 co-sponsors of the bill. Republicans Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dave Reichert voted against it; Republican Doc Hastings did not vote.

The celebrations may be short-lived. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has pledged to block the bill, and the White House says President Bush will veto the measure if it reaches his desk.

The House vote was short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a veto.

The legislation, also called the card check bill, would certify a union as soon as a majority of workers at a plant signed cards authorizing it. Employers now can require elections, overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, on whether a union should be recognized.

Labor groups contend that secret-ballot elections have become a means for employers to intimidate workers into rejecting unions.

"In the past few decades, labor law has been so twisted by corporations and their union-busting hired guns that it is now virtually impossible to form a union against an employer's wishes," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.

The labor-rights group American Rights at Work said that, before such elections, 80 percent of employers hire union-busting consultants and 90 percent force employees to attend one-on-one anti-union meetings with supervisors.

The legislation also would toughen penalties against employers who violate worker rights during organizing drives and set up a binding-arbitration process to prevent companies from thwarting a new union by bargaining in bad faith on an initial contract.

Business groups campaigned against the bill, saying it is an affront to democratic principles and would give high-pressure organizers unimpeded access to workers.

"This is an effort to help them get more members, to make it easier for them to sign them up and to intimidate them to sign cards," Boehner said.

Seattle Times Washington bureau reporter Alicia Mundy contributed to this report.