The work that I have taken to complete this book has been done on a highly compressed time schedule. During the late summer of 2008, I was approached by my friend James Franczek, senior partner at the Chicago labor law firm of Franczek, Radelet & Rose, about the possibility of doing some work on the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which passed the House of Representatives in 2008, only to die in the Senate after a procedural vote to consider the bill failed to garner the necessary 60 votes. Franczek, and others whom I met with that summer, were confident that the reintroduction of EFCA was highly likely in 2009, especially if the Democratic majority increased in the Senate and (as has turned out to be the case) Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.
President Obama has been a persistent and outspoken supporter of this proposed legislation, and he takes office with solid labor-backed Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. As a result, the pressure has escalated on legislators to consider EFCA, which, as will be come evident, has three major components. The first of these is an increase in the penalties for unfair labor practices by employers during the course of union organization campaigns. The second is the use of a card-check system to authorize a union for a particular bargaining unit. The third is a system of mandatory interest arbitration which allows a panel of federal arbitrators to set the terms of a first two-year contract of an overtly truncated timeline of 130 days is not met. The statute would in effect bypass the protections of the secret ballot in the formation of a union and deny any employer or employee the option to refuse to deal on the terms demanded by a union. These are no small changes.
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