Specter to Support Senate Vote on Pro-Union Bill in Reversal

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJE3hnG29Ljo

By Holly Rosenkrantz

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Senator Arlen Specter, the self- described “decisive vote” on a union organizing bill stalled in Congress, reversed his position and said he will support efforts to bring the so-called card-check legislation to a vote.

Specter, a Pennsylvania Democrat who left the Republican Party in April, said he expects a vote to occur on a “modified” Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to form a union. “I will support that cloture vote,” Specter, 79, told a bloggers convention in Pittsburgh today, according to his spokeswoman, Kate Kelly.

The senator dealt the bill a blow in March when he said he is likely to be the “decisive vote” blocking the Democratic- led legislation. Since then, Specter has switched parties and held talks with other senators to rework the bill so that it can secure the 60 votes needed to overcome Republican opposition.

The Employee Free Choice Act would change the rules for how workers unionize, and includes a card-check provision requiring employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they want a union. The Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business-lobbying group, has referred to bill as “Armageddon” and vowed to make sure it is killed.

“There is no way to improve such a fundamentally flawed bill that seeks to skew the balance in our labor law system,” said Keith Smith, director of employment and labor issues at the National Association of Manufacturers.

FULL story at link.

[bluestateguy]

1. This should be the next order of business after the health care bill

and I don't think he would have done this had he not felt the heat from Sestak on his left flank.

[bbgrunt]

5. exactly what I was thinking.

[grantcart]

2. good for him

[sabrina 1]

3. Good for him. Maybe finally coming face to face

with the lunatics who obstruct everything good in this country, and who used to be his base, made him think a little about whose side he wants to be on.

[Plausible]

6. I was thinking along those same lines. n/t

[demosincebirth]

4. The second most important bill next to HC.

[zbdent]

7. I'll wait until the bill comes up for a vote, and he actually casts his vote

before I'll believe that he's voting for it ...

Didn't he already vote against it, shortly after he switched?

[pnorman]

8. I believe that Specter was originally one of the co-signers of EFCA,

but he seems to have been pressured out of it. Time will tell on this, but I'm hoping for the best. My initial negative opinion of him was what his complicity in what I firmly believe to have been a cover up of the JFK assassination. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory) I could have cited a link that might have presented him in a less favorable light, but in the end I settled for that Wiki. That's always a good place to start.

I believe that it's VITAL that Obama puts his all into Healthcare Reform. His opponents are certainly going all out on this, and a defeat here might have serious consequences for the rest of his agenda.

pnorman
On edit: Here's Specter on EFCA: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/29/specter-efca-consistency/