WASHINGTON — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and two other senators have emerged as focal points of an intense lobbying campaign aimed at heading off a proposed compromise over "card check," the controversial legislation that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers.
The bill has been the top priority of organized labor, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has earmarked $20 million over two years to kill it. On Wednesday, the chamber flew 287 executives to Washington to lobby members of Congress -- with more than 180 of them coming from California to press Feinstein to end her support for the possible compromise.
Meantime, a small group of labor activists sought to exert pressure on Feinstein, beginning what they said would be a two-day fast in a tent erected outside the doors of her office in downtown San Francisco.
The other two lobbying targets are Democrats Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, both of whom supported the bill in the past but came out against it this year. The compromise talks have been convened by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a strong labor supporter and original sponsor of the bill who has vowed to push it to a vote this year.
Earlier this week, Harkin said that if no compromise was worked out, he would seek to force a vote on the floor -- a move that would put Democrats in an awkward position with organized labor, one of their largest political allies.
As originally drafted, the card-check measure would have allowed unions to start a bargaining unit if a majority of workers at a company signed cards requesting one. Businesses protested that the proposed system would end management's option to call for secret-ballot elections. Union officials say that such elections allow companies to intimidate workers. Businesses complained that the measure would open employees to intimidation from union officials.
The chamber and other business groups pressed their arguments so successfully that the original card-check provision was declared dead. In its place, Feinstein -- a former cosponsor of the original legislation -- floated a proposal that would allow workers to mail cards or ballots to a third party rather than turn them in at the workplace.
Labor, which has seen more than half a dozen of the original cosponsors drop their support this year, is open to considering the idea. Business is opposed to any proposed compromise.
