Employee Free Choice: Winning the Battle by Knowing Where the Lines are Drawn

Yesterday at the Senate Progressive Media Summit, I spoke to five freshmen Senators about their positions on the Employee Free Choice Act. Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen and Tom Udall have all signed on to the bill, and Roland Burris said he wasn't yet familiar with it. Mark Udall is also a co-sponsor of the bill, but he said that even though he had voted for it in the House, he thought that it might have to be massaged in order to get through the Senate.

In order to understand Udall's concerns, it's important to understand that what the bill's opponents say they object to is substantially different than what they actually object to.

T.A. Frank writes a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed piece in the Washington Monthly where he fails to make that distinction. He asserts that it's possible to achieve a compromise on Employee Free Choice by removing what he calls the "card check" provision (using the right-wing term of art, rather than "majority sign-up"):