By Dave Lindorff

President Barack Obama was so obviously pleased to have five-term
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announce that he was
switching party affiliation and joining the Democratic Party that the
president missed an opportunity to make sure that his new BFF in the
Senate was also a backer of the issues that Obama ran on in the
presidential campaign.

Indeed, while President Obama was quick to offer Sen. Specter his
backing and even to offer to help him with fund-raising in his quest
for re-election in 2010, he said nothing at all about any quid-pro-quo.

This is not only unfortunate. It is irresponsible.

Sen. Specter, for all his claims to be an independent thinker, has
over the years voted at lease 65% of the time with his Republican
colleagues in the Senate—a support level for Republican positions that
exceeds that of two of his Republican colleagues from Maine, Sen.
Olympia Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins.

Sen. Specter, notably, had actually reversed himself in recent
months, on the issue of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill, which
would make it easier for workers to establish labor unions in their
workplaces, and to win a first contract with management. At one time,
Sen. Specter had voted in favor of letting such a bill go to a vote in
the Senate, but lately, as he was contemplating a tough primary battle
against a conservative challenger, he had changed his tune, saying that
he would not vote to block a planned Republican filibuster of this
legislation.

The EFCA is a key legislative goal of the US labor movement, which
has seen its ranks dwindle over 50 years of successful corporate
lobbying efforts to whittle away labor law protections for the right to
organize. Where once nearly a third of all workers were in labor unions
back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, today, fewer than 9 percent of
workers in the private sector belong to unions, a figure that only
rises to about 12.5 percent when public employees are added in. This
despite the fact that 58 percent of Americans say that they would like
to have a union if they could get one.

Today, labor laws are violated with impunity to the point that one
lawyer from a prominent labor-busting law firm, faced with a unfair
labor practices filing and hearing by a union currently in its 10th
month of trying to negotiate a new contract with management, said to
union leaders, “Why are you bothering to file a ULP? You know there are
no real penalties for violating labor laws.”

The problem is that the National Labor Relations Act is so weak,
with no real penalties for management violations, and the Labor
Relations Boards that hear and rule on labor law violations are so
infested with pro-management members, that it is nearly impossible to
unionize new workplaces today. Corporate managements know that they can
fire union organizers at will with little consequence, that they can
stall off union elections for years and use the intervening time to
intimidate or replace pro-union employees, and that even if workers
ultimately get to hold a union election and do vote in favor of
unionization, they can safely stonewall negotiations for a first
contract.

The EFCA would address this problem in two ways. Firstly, it would
eliminate the cumbersome and easily delayed requirement for a secret
ballot election to establish a union. All union organizers would have
to do would be to collect cards of support for a union from a majority
of the workers at a workplace, and once those signatures were verified,
the company would have to recognize the union. Then the union and
management would get 90 days to negotiate an initial contract. If they
failed to reach an agreement, an initial contract would be established
through arbitration.

The House last year, under Democratic control, passed the EFCA,
only to have the bill die in the Senate, where Democrats held only a
one-vote edge. Republicans managed to prevent the measure from even
coming to a vote.

Last fall, the vast majority of Democrats running for reelection
said they backed EFCA, as did Barack Obama on the campaign trail. But
now that the new Congress is in session, support for the measure is
softening, under the pressure of a massive multi-million-dollar
lobbying campaign by such organizations as the US Chamber of Commerce
and the National Association of Manufacturers. A key player in the
campaign against EFCA has been Wal-Mart.

Sen. Specter, as a Republican facing a conservative challenger,
clearly felt he needed to oppose EFCA. But now Specter is claiming to
be a Democrat, in a state with significant union representation. Even
so, union activists report that when they went to his main office in
Pennsylvania to deliver tens of thousands of petitions calling on him
to support the reform measure, they were told by a staffer that their
hard work would just “go in the trash” when they left the office.

Specter’s continued opposition to EFCA stands as an insult and an
affront to all the workers in his home state, and the local labor
movement should withhold any support from him until he comes out
strongly and unambiguously for passage of EFCA.

President Obama too should be demanding that Specter promise to
support EFCA passage before he commits himself to backing the senator’s
re-election bid.

The same should be said for health reform. It’s not clear at this
point whether Specter even backs Obama’s health reform plan. In truth
though, particularly given the number of uninsured people living in
Pennsylvania, Specter should be pressed to back the single-payer bill
being put forward in the Senate by his colleague Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-VT). Specter, after all, just went through a tough battle with
cancer, which he seems to have beaten thanks to his extraordinarily
generous Congressionally offered and taxpayer funded health insurance
plan, and his access to the finest doctors and hospitals the country
has to offer. He is not in any position, ethically, at this point to
oppose making healthcare available to and affordable for every resident
of his state.

Right now, Specter is at his most vulnerable. Many of his long-time
Republican and independent backers are angry at him for quitting the
party, and at the same time, many Democrats, who have voted against him
for years as a Republican, are skeptical about his sudden change of
party registration.

Now is the time that President Obama should be demanding that
Specter back the key elements of his program. Now is also the time that
progressives and labor activists in Pennsylvania should be letting Sen.
Specter know that if he wants their support in 2010, he will have to
support our issues. That means full-throated backing for EFCA, and for
a single-payer health plan for America.

If Specter weasels on these key issues, progressives and labor
should withhold their backing and throw themselves behind a more
progressive candidate, should one choose to run against him for the
Democratic nomination next spring.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is
“The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net