Pro-Worker Senator, Union Leaders Agree: Employee Free Choice Act Delayed Until 
2009
By Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer
WASHINGTON (PAI)--A strongly pro-worker senator from one of the nation’s 
most-unionized states and the chair of Change to Win agree the Employee Free 
Choice Act will not be brought up again in this Congress, but it will come up in 
2009.
Replying to questions after a speech to the Economic Policy Institute on Feb. 
13, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said “one of our top two or three priorities is 
the Employee Free Choice Act, once a new president comes in in 2009.”
And last month, in an interview with reporters, Change to Win Chair Anna Burger 
said: “EFCA isn’t coming up in 2008” after a Senate GOP filibuster defeated it 
last year. “We’re building for 2009 and the 60 votes we need” to overcome such a 
talkathon. “We’re out there in Maine, Colorado, Virginia and other states, 
asking candidates where they stand on the bill,” she added. All three seats are 
up and are GOP-held. 
Teamsters President James Hoffa agrees, calling EFCA key to his 1.5-million member union’s 
support. “We have a lot of agendas” in the labor movement “but what I call a 
litmus test” for candidates “is EFCA,” he said Feb. 8. “We got 52 votes in the 
Senate, but we needed 60” to break the filibuster, he said. The actual vote was 
51-48.
“EFCA will give us card-check” recognition of unions once they achieve a 
majority of workers at a firm or plant signing election authorization cards, 
Hoffa added. “We’ll be like Canada” which has card check recognition in 
provincial labor laws.
Both Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary 
Clinton (D-N.Y.), voted to halt the GOP talkathon that defeated the House-passed 
EFCA bill. Presumed GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted 
for the filibuster.
The Employee Free Choice Act would help level the playing field between workers 
and bosses in union organizing and in bargaining first contracts. Besides 
writing card-check recognition into law, the act also will make it easier to get court orders against labor law-breakers and 
it will increase fines for labor law-breaking.
EFCA, sponsored by Senate Labor Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) 
and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), would 
also outlaw employer-run “captive audience” meetings where workers are forced to 
listen to anti-union diatribes under threat of punishment for staying away, and 
mandate binding arbitration when workers and bosses cannot agree on a first 
contract.
EFCA is based on legislation written by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.).