President-elect caught between unions and business

Los Angeles: Two months before Barack Obama is sworn in, opening salvos are being launched over what could become one of the thorniest issues his administration will face next year.

Organised labour, which spent about $80 million (Dh294 million) to put Obama in the White House and Democrats in Cong-ress, wants him to deliver on its top priority: new rules to make it easier to unionise workplaces.

A union-backed organisation whose founder is one of Obama's economic advisers planned to start a national ad campaign calling for the legislation.

Obama and his vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, embraced the measure in the Senate last year, and on the campaign trail this year, particularly in front of union audiences.

But the issue poses a quandary for the president-elect. If he pushes for the law, he risks alienating business - which also contributed heavily to his campaign and his party and will be critical to his efforts to fix the crippled economy and overhaul the health-care system.

"President-elect Obama needs to think about how much political capital he wants to put behind this," said Glenn Spencer, a Chamber of Commerce executive who is leading the fight to kill the measure. If it is passed in Obama's first 100 days, Spencer said, it is "going to look like a special-interest payback".

The chamber stayed out of the presidential race, but spent $35 million on the elections, much of it to try to keep Democrats from reaching the 60 Senate seats needed to block filibusters.

Paul Booth, a top official in the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME), is quick to say that congressional leaders will decide when to move the Bill. But he has his view: "Sooner the better. I'm quite anxious to have it come up."

AFSCME, which had endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, spent $50 million on the 2008 election, he estimated.

The issue is somewhat arcane. It involves the method by which unions organise workers. The Employee Free Choice Act, sponsored by Representative George Miller, Democrat from California, would do away with secret-ballot elections and require employers to enter into contract talks when a majority of workers sign union cards.

The legislation comes at a time when labour, while relatively strong among government workers, represents 12 per cent of the work force, down from one-third at its height in the early 1950s. While the measure is sure to come up next year, the question is one of timing.

"Not everybody gets to go through the front door of the White House on the first day. That is just the reality of the situation," said Miller, entering his 34th year in the House.

First Bill?

The labour committee chairman said he is all but certain that the measure will not be "the first Bill out of the chute". But he also vowed that it is "not moving to the back of the train".

From Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, California, the measure is at the top of labour's wish list.

Barry Broad, a Teamster lobbyist and attorney in Sacramento, believes the future of unions hangs in the balance.

Broad was among hundreds of union people who walked door-to-door on Obama's behalf in Reno, Nevada, in the days leading up to the November 4 election. Tens of thousands of other union leaders and rank-and-file members did the same in other battleground states.