Union chief predicts win on 'card check' law

WASHINGTON -- The head of the country's largest labor union says he expects victory by August on one of labor's top priorities in Congress: legislation designed to make union organizing easier.

Andrew Stern, president of the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union, said Wednesday he thinks there are enough votes in the House and Senate to approve the bill known as "card check." The measure would allow workers to form a union by gathering signed cards from a majority of employees, rather than the current method of winning a secret-ballot election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.

Stern, in an interview with USA TODAY, cast the issue as a way to help workers during hard economic times and change the balance "between big business and people who work."

"It's not about unions. It's about how America is going to rebuild the middle class," Stern said.

Opponents of card check such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce say it would allow union organizers to coerce or intimidate workers and would lead to higher costs that could drive some companies out of business.

"The bottom line is, the unions are pretending this card check process is fair to workers, and it's not," said Randy Johnson, the chamber's vice president for labor issues.

The card-check bill has been the subject of a ferocious political battle between labor unions such as SEIU and business groups that oppose it. Both sides have spent millions of dollars in advertising, including in key Senate campaigns last year — including North Carolina, New Hampshire and Oregon— where Democratic challengers defeated Republican incumbents.

The House passed card-check legislation in 2007, but it died in the Senate. Stern said he was confident the bill would get the 60 votes needed block a Senate filibuster.

No one has introduced the legislation in Congress this year, however, which Johnson said indicates unions are losing momentum. "I feel quite good that if there were a vote in the Senate today, it would fail," Johnson said.