A powerful union is lobbying Democratic and Republican congressional negotiators to make sure they don’t curtail worker rights when they finalize new FAA legislation.
A conference committee composed of a bipartisan group of senators and congressmen will soon sort out differences between two different versions of the bill. But the House bill contains a provision that would make it much more difficult for airline and rail workers to form unions. More on that provision here — it would reinstate old rules that count abstentions as “no” votes in union elections, thus stacking the deck against pro-union workers.
An effort to strip that provision failed in the House, despite a lengthy campaign by labor advocates, including the Communication Workers of America. That union is now turning its attention toward the Senate. The CWA is also reiterating a key argument it made in previous lobbying efforts: not a single member of the Senate would have been elected if non-voters had been tallied as supporters of their opponents.
“Zero current Senators would have won their last election under this election standard,” reads a CWA report being distributed to members of the Senate. “As with House Members, not a single Senator would have been elected in their last election using the proposed NMB election standard. Under these egregious election standards, votes for their actual opponent(s) in their previous election are tallied together with non-voting eligible voters, as non-voters are counted as “no” voters for the incumbent.”
You can read the entire report below. The White House has threatened to veto the legislation if this anti-union provision is included — which gives the Senate tremendous leverage in these conference committee negotiations. Their negotiators are Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Max Baucus (D-MT), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), and John Ensign (R-NV).
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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