Kay Hagan went on record in support of so-called card check legislation, which would allow employees to unionize by checking their preference on a card in majority numbers rather than go through a lengthy and costly secret ballot election, during her run for Senate against Republican Liddy Dole last year.
Campaign spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan said in an e-mail to me a month before the election: “Kay supports it as a way to level the playing field for working families. Right now, employees can unionize by either a secret ballot or a card check, but the employer is essentially allowed to decide which method will be officially recognized. This bill simply allows the workers, not the employers, to decide which method to use, and stiffens penalties for intimidation.”
For some voters looking for daylight between the positions of the business Democrat Hagan and Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole, the card check issue was one reason to support Hagan. YES! Weekly, in fact, based its endorsement of Hagan on the premise that she would help the Democrats achieve a 60-percent supermajority and her support for card check. (The Rhinoceros Times, on the other hand, endorsed Dole for exactly the same reasons.)
Since being sworn in to the US Senate, Hagan has repeated her support for card check, but I haven’t heard back from the senator’s new statewide office in Greensboro, making me wonder whether Hagan is getting cold feet.
The Employee Free Choice Act remains stalled in committee with 39 cosponsors, none of which is Kay Hagan. So what’s happened? I left a phone message for one of the Hagan’s aides at the senator’s new state headquarters office in Greensboro, but I have yet to hear back. Let’s hope that changes.
Hagan has a bit of a tight-rope walk, suggested John Quinterno, a research associate with whom I spoke at the left-leaning NC Budget & Tax Center.
“Many Southern senators face cross pressures from labor interests and business groups in their respective states," he said, "and until there’s a concrete bill in front of them they will be reserved in their judgment.”
2 comments:
It would be good to see Hagan develop some principled consistency in her view of unions.
During the election, she said she favored allowing public employees to unionize, then told Mark Binker at the N&R that what she meant to say was that she opposed allowing public employees to unionize -- but she did favor making unionizing easier in the private workplace by supporting card check. Good for you if you are the one able to get her to take a position.
This requires a lot more reporting, and hopefully I'll find the time to do it, if it hasn't been done elsewhere. Basically, my understanding is that the conservative Southern Democrats in the Senate — including Jim Webb of Virginia and the two senators from Arkansas — have taken an equivocal stance on card-check, denying it the supermajority to overcome a filibuster. I don't know about other Southern Democrats, but I've read that Hagan received significant funding from labor during the campaign with attendant expectations that she would fulfill her promise to support card-check. It has to create a dilemma for her, considering that her personal experience and politics are much more attuned to the dictates of business. And North Carolina's notorious anti-union culture makes it seem that it would be easy for Hagan to buck her promise to labor (much of whose money comes from outside of North Carolina) in favor of constituencies closer to home.
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