ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Your budget may be tight these days, but a lobbying spendathon is picking up speed here in Washington. It's over the Employee Free Choice Act, which Democrats introduced in Congress this week. The bill would make it easier for unions to organize workers, and it's opposed by most business groups. Both sides say they'll go all out in dozens of states to influence a Senate showdown later this year.
NPR's Washington editor Ron Elving is with us now to talk about this.
First, take a step back, tell us about the Employee Free Choice Act.
RON ELVING: Michele, this is something that was absolutely at the top of the list for organized labor for years. This has really been their Holy Grail. It's essentially just an easier way for them to organize workers at the very point of people's hire, when they first come into a workplace. It makes it a lot easier to just have them check off a card, and they don't have to have an organized National Labor Relations Board election.
NORRIS: Was there a thinking that with the change in leadership in the White House, that there would be support for this, that this would be something that would be much easier to gain support for on Capitol Hill?
ELVING: Yes, because when he was a senator, Barack Obama was one of the co-sponsors of the legislation that did not get approved in earlier Congresses, that would have created this kind of ability for unionizing in the workplace. So with him becoming president and still supportive, the labor movement has assumed that this would be their great achievement in this new Congress.
NORRIS: But it sounds like the fight right now is not just in Congress. The unions are talking about taking this out to the states, fighting state-by-state to build support for this.
ELVING: That's right because what they have learned is that in the new Congress, some of the senators they had been counting on, on the Democratic side, to get them to 60 votes - and as you know, you need to have 60 votes to pass any real monumental legislation or anything really important - some of those senators have started to get a little bit of cold feet, because this is the most important issue to the United States Chamber of Commerce, as well as to the organized labor movement. And they're out there organizing state-by-state, as well.
NORRIS: Help us understand what the Chamber of Commerce has at stake here. Help us understand exactly what's at stake for the Chamber of Commerce, Ron.
ELVING: Most employers feel that if they do not have any kind of opportunity to take the full National Labor Relations Board process and put it in place here, they're going to have all kinds of strong-arming going on by organized labor, and that people will be finding themselves in unions who don't really want to vote for it because they'll have to make a kind of public choice and say, oh, sure, yeah, okay, I'll check that card. And they won't have the opportunity to have a private ballot in which they can express their true feelings.
And labor has experimented with this in the past. Managers have experimented with this in the past. They've had lots of back and forth, lots of experience over the years, in which both sides have come to the conclusion that the secret ballot generally does favor management.
NORRIS: And Ron, we're going to let you go in just a minute. But I imagine that the folks on Capitol Hill that are weighing this probably have the midterms on their minds.
ELVING: It's not long before 2010. And in the meantime, between now and 2010, members on both sides of this issue are going to be raising money. And that's where lobbyists usually make their point of entry, their entree. They raise money for members. They get some access to the members. They elicit a certain understanding with members, as to where they're going to be on key issues.
And, as I've said, the management and labor forces both regard this as the key issue in this Congress for them.
NORRIS: Ron Elving, thank you so much.
ELVING: My pleasure, Michele.
NORRIS: That's NPR's senior political editor, Ron Elving. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
