Labor and business face off at Democratic convention

DENVER (Reuters) - Unions and big business resumed hostilities this week at the Democratic convention over legislation to make organizing workers easier, sharpening the divide between U.S. labor and management.

Organized labor is putting the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would change the rules on the formation of unions, at the center of its election-year campaign effort, while corporate lobbyists are vowing to block it.

The struggle over the bill, expected to be introduced in Congress early next year, underscores the close alliance of labor with Democrats, and business with Republicans.

"Workers understand what's happened to them over the past eight years ... They understand that we have to elect Democrats," John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said in an interview after speaking at the convention.

Unions are pouring volunteers and big money into backing Barack Obama, attacking John McCain and supporting Democrats in selected U.S. Senate races where Republicans look vulnerable.

Lobbyists for labor and corporate America are swarming the conventions this week and next, seeking access to delegates, lawmakers and other movers and shakers who could shape policy in the administration that will take office in January.

Standing in the hall outside the union suites at Denver's Pepsi Center where labor's convention presence is prominent, Sweeney said, "It's important that workers recognize that they need political power to achieve changes.

"We couldn't get the Employee Free Choice Act if we had a continuation of the Republican administration ... Workers are understanding more and more that McCain would just be a continuation of the Bush administration."

A few blocks away in a downtown Denver office building boardroom, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue outlined the political posture of the nation's largest business lobbying organization in a pivotal election season.

"The chamber is a bipartisan organization ... but clearly we endorse far more Republicans than we do Democrats because we're a business organization," he said at a press briefing.

On EFCA, he said labor is in for a fight. "This is a battle that these guys are going to find very uncomfortable."

LABOR RESURGENT

In a country where strikes are rare, union membership has fallen, and Wall Street no longer even bothers to factor "labor risk" into stock valuations, labor is reasserting itself.

Unions played a major role in the Democrats' regaining control of Congress in 2006 and are working for similar 2008 results. In return, they expect to be heard on Capitol Hill and they will be as long as Democrats are in charge.

The EFCA was approved in March 2007 by the House of Representatives, which is under firm Democratic control. But it stalled in the closely divided Senate, where McCain voted against allowing the bill to proceed. Obama supports the bill.

Under the measure, unions could be certified once a majority of employees sign union authorization cards; a time line would be set for first contracts to be drawn up between unions and employees; and higher fines would be imposed on employers guilty of violating employees' rights to unionize.

Donohue said the bill would rob workers of the ability to cast their votes on whether to unionize in a secret ballot.

"One of the major reasons I'm here is we want to preserve the right ... of a secret ballot. The suggestion by American labor unions is that we would eliminate that right," he said.

The EFCA is a top priority for Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House labor committee, said his spokeswoman Rachel Racusen at the convention.

Jacob Hay, spokesman for the Laborers' International Union of North America, another big presence at the convention, said, "You only have to fear the EFCA if you're an employer paying sub-standard wages and have unsafe working conditions."

Sweeney said Donohue and "a number of his members are so opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act because they're scared to death of workers having a stronger way to express themselves in terms of whether they want to belong to a union."

He said labor laws have been weakened in recent years and that unions are betting heavily on Democrats to change that.

"We believe that with a Democratic majority in both the Senate and the House, and a president who is already committed to signing a bill when it gets to him, that it's going to be a major victory," Sweeney said.

(Editing by Howard Goller and David Storey)