‘Card-check’ may be dropped from union measure, Harkin says

[Earth Bound Misfit]

http://www.finance-commerce.com/article.cfm/2009/05/05/Cardcheck-may-be-dropped-from-union-measure-Harkin-says

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, who sponsored legislation to make it easier for workers to join unions, said the main provision of the proposal may have to be dropped to get the votes to pass it.

There isn’t enough support for a provision called card-check that would allow workers to bypass an election and form a union when a majority of them sign cards requesting one, Harkin said Monday in an interview.

“Compromises are going to be made,” said Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. “It probably won’t be card-check because too many people are opposed to it now.”

The legislation stalled in the Senate after several lawmakers whose votes would be needed to overcome Republican opposition, such as Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, said they wouldn’t support the measure. Companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville, Ark., have led opposition.

-snip-

A softened version of the bill may attract support from more lawmakers, Harkin said. “Many do feel there is an imbalance” in current laws that favors business over labor, Harkin said.

“They may not be for the card-check, but they are for changing election process and procedures and shortening the period of time for elections” to form unions in a company.

[BlooInBloo]

1. (facepalm)

[madrchsod]

2. these assholes are selling us out down the river

why fucking bother calling these assholes,they listen to cash.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. I like Harkin -

he and his wife spoke at my law school graduation when he was just a young buck in Congress, serving his first term as a Representative. She was a "lady lawyer", still rather a rarity back then, and they were great.

He's been a good friend to workers, so if he sees this as a compromise that will get the job done, I'd say "Do it."

[Better Believe It]

7. The problem is a card check bill without card check won't get the job done.

Is that really so hard to understand?

What will they strip from the bill next .... compulsory arbitration? That would make the bill entirely meaningless for working people and the union movement.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

8. What seems "hard to understand"

is your capacity to comprehend that compromise is how things get done in Washington. There are enough other things that matter to give up the card check option in order to salvage the other, valuable items.

Is that really so hard to understand?

[Better Believe It]

9. So tell me what was compromised when the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and

other civil rights legislation was passed over conservative Democratic/Republican objections in the Senate in the 1960's?

Nothing was compromised.

That's not how things got done by the civil rights movement.

How about women's voting rights? What compromises were made to win the right to vote? None.

I could go on and on with a very long list of progressive legislation passed over the past century in which reactionary politicians were simply defeated and not compromised with. Do I really need to do that for you so that you'll understand?

I take it you haven't read or at least are not familiar with the card check bill and therefore fail to understand why a card check provision is so important to a card check bill. That's sort of like believing that a right to vote provision isn't all that important to a voting rights act law. After all, there might be some other good "stuff" in the bill that doesn't guarantee and protect the right to vote but it's still good sounding stuff!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. Do you have a copy of

the legislative history of the Civil Rights legislation, or the Voting Rights legislation? Because without the legislative history, you don't know what you're talking about.

Everything in Washington is a matter of compromise. That's how the system works, and no bill ever ends up in the same form in which it is first introduced. This is how it's set up and how it has always been. You act as if "compromise" is some dirty new invention.

You're blowing smoke, you know, without any attribution to your claims. Bills get passed, but to assume - as you do, without any historical reference to indicate that you know what you're talking about - that they were simply passed, just as they were initially written is to betray a fundamental lack of knowledge of legislative drafting and how the legislative process works.

It's all about compromise, and if you don't like compromise, well, don't go into politics......................................

[Better Believe It]

11. Compomise has long been the excuse used by "moderates" to justify inaction.

I'm not going to do your research for you.

You need to learn a little bit about the history of this nation.

If you study the history, you find out that it's not all about compromise.

But study the real people's history, not just the fantasy propaganda you might get in school by "mainstream" teachers.


Nothing was compromised away by the civil rights movement when the Voting Rights Act was brought up for a vote.

Nothing was compromised by the Women's suffrage movement when they had legislation passed to amend the Constitution so that women would finally have universal suffrage.

I'm not going to engage in a semantics debate with you.

The bottom line is that nothing was compromised away by the civil rights or women's rights movements to obtain the right to vote.

If you think otherwise, prove it.

What compromise with former slaveholders on the right of black people to vote in the south was made during the Radical Reconstruction period?

[DJ13]

4. Without card check, whats the point?

Thats like calling a bill "health care legislation" that doesnt do anything about health care.

[Dragonfli]

5. A pretense nothing more. The current congress sure is union unfriendly

Our Democrats are no more interested in American workers than the Republicans are.

Why do we support them again?

[spag68]

6. Democrats

To answer your question, because there is no where else to go.