Al Franken speaks with union members after signing an EFCA petition, July 2008. Photo: AFL-CIO

Throughout the 2008 campaign, the “card-check” provision of the Employee Free Choice act was a political lightning rod. Business groups hammered candidates across the country, including Al Franken in Minnesota, with ads pillorying the proposal as an attack on workers’ rights. Organized labor lobbied ferociously for the provision, which would allow workers to unionize when more than half have signed cards indicating support for collective bargaining. They argued that it was essential to rejuvenating the labor movement after decades of decline, and spent millions working to get Democrats elected in the belief that they would pass the card-check provision.

So when The New York Times reported last month that Democratic leaders had quietly decided to drop the controversial measure from the Employee Free Choice Act without so much as a vote, it came as something of a slap in the face to organized labor. While union officials insist that card check is not yet dead, it seems unlikely that the labor law revision will ultimately be enacted.

“It’d be really really nice if the Democrats would grow a little bit of a backbone,” said Martin Goff, organizing director for UNITE HERE Local 17. “We have the House, the Senate and the presidency. Yet these guys start going to their second, third and fourth positions before the Republicans even ask for it. I’m disgusted actually.”

Bernie Hesse, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, is similarly put off by the backpedaling from Democrats.

“Why did we do all this work?” Hesse asked. “That’s kind of a weird way to bargain, to start taking stuff away before they even start marking up the bill.”

Hesse has traveled to Washington, D.C., in order to lobby for the Employee Free Choice Act. He described organized labor’s dalliance with Democrats as an abusive relationship. “We keep going back to them even though they beat us,” he said.

The need for an overhaul of the country’s labor laws is obvious from organized labor’s perspective. The number of workers belonging to unions has been in free-fall in recent decades. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 12 percent of workers were union members in 2008, down from just over 20 percent in 1983, the first year for which federal statistics were kept.

Union organizers blame this decline in part on increasingly aggressive campaigns by employers to fight organizing efforts and weak labor laws that only offer a slap on the wrist to companies that break the law. Indeed, according to a study released in May by Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, companies have become more brazen in their anti-union tactics. The study found that more than half of the companies examined threatened employees with wage cuts or shuttered work sites, and roughly one third fired workers for pro-union activities. Even when workers did vote to organize, the study found that more than half were without an initial labor contract after a year.

“What’s happened under the existing labor laws is that employers and their attorneys have figured out where the holes are,” said Peter Rachleff, a labor historian at Macalester College. “They’re able to intimidate workers, they’re able to create a climate of fear, they’re able to discourage workers from availing themselves of their right to organize.”

The Employee Free Choice Act is designed to make such anti-union tactics more difficult for companies to utilize. In addition to the card-check provision, it would also force binding arbitration on companies if they fail to reach agreement on a labor contract after a year — a provision that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business interests are equally alarmed by. The legislation would also provide tougher punishments — including fines — for companies that flout the laws.

But Rachleff also argues that unions must share the blame for their decline. He believes that even if organized labor ultimately gets everything it wants in the Employee Free Choice Act it won’t be sufficient to rejuvenate their ranks.

“I have low expectations of what the Employee Free Choice Act would mean if it were passed,” he said. “I don’t think that the existing labor movement is prepared to get out and organize even if the ground rules were to change.”

Rachleff is not at all surprised that Democrats appear to be backing away from the most controversial element of the legislation and believes that labor leaders are complicit in the decision to drop card check.

“Various union leaders signaled to the Democrats that it was OK,” he said. “It’s just a sorry-ass situation. The leaders of the existing labor organizations, they have to find things to make it look like they’re doing something. Pushing the Employee Free Choice Act became something very convenient for them to look like they were spending their members’ dues on good things.”

But local labor leaders insist that the card-check provision is not dead. Shar Knutson, president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, was on a conference call with national union leaders on Tuesday to get an update on the situation.

“It’s still in play,” she said. “No one’s conceding anything.”

Eric Lehto, director of organizing for AFSCME Council 5, said the union will be mobilizing its 43,000 members to lobby Minnesota’s legislators during the legislative break for Labor Day. U.S. Sen. Al Franken immediately signed-on as a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act upon finally being seated in Washington. But Lehto and other labor leaders believe Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, could more forcefully promote passage of the legislation, including the card-check provision.

“We would like to see Amy take more of a pro-active effort in pushing the legislation and publicly advocating for it,” he says.

Lehto believes it’s not too late to save the card-check provision that labor unions spent so much time and money advocating for during the last election cycle.

“I wouldn’t say it’s dead,” he said. “There’s still work to be done during recess. What the final bill’s going to look like I don’t know.”

But today, Local 17 officials view Rykunyk as their arch rival. They accuse her of trying to steal its members and endangering the future of the very union that she helped build.

“It’s unfortunate when someone like Jaye leaves and kind of stabs us in the back,” says Joy Anderson, a member of Local 17′s executive board and a banquet server at a downtown Minneapolis hotel. “People are mad about that and disappointed.”

The dispute is just one piece of a contentious, nationwide crumbling of the UNITE HERE labor alliance. Five years ago UNITE — formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees — and HERE merged. At the time it looked like an ideal marriage. The two unions had  worked cooperatively on a strike at Yale University and an organizing drive at the H&M clothing chain. HERE focused on a group of workers that seemed ripe for organizing drives but was short on cash. UNITE’s core industries had been ravaged by the North American Free Trade Agreement, but it had plenty of money. Among its holdings: Amalgamated Bank, with roughly $5 billion in assets at the time.

But the partnership has since gone horribly sour. At the heart of the battle is a clash between two of labor’s most charismatic figures, former national HERE leader John Wilhelm and former UNITE boss Bruce Raynor. The current uprising began in January when UNITE HERE’s top official in Michigan was ousted, and violent confrontations ensued between the two factions. The next month Raynor filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing his adversaries of violating the union’s constitution and seeking to seize control of the labor group’s finances. Wilhelm’s faction counter-sued. Then in March several regional boards, which oversee local unions, voted to disaffiliate themselves from UNITE HERE.

The ramifications of the nasty dispute have spilled out across the country. Despite her roots in HERE, Rykunyk was among the officials who sided with the Raynor faction. She argues that the UNITE HERE merger was an unmitigated failure and that the clashing cultures of the two organizations could not be reconciled.

“Anytime there is a divorce, it’s painful and it’s complicated,” says Rykunyk. “Emotions run high. I know my former colleagues have some very strong feelings and I hope that that will pass.”

Local 17 officials, however, balked at her alignment with what they call the “secessionist” movement.

“Jaye tried to bring us with her and we refused,” says Wade Luneberg, Secretary/Treasurer of Local 17. “We’re a hospitality local. The majority of their members are not hospitality workers. We didn’t think it made sense.”

The two parties have been warring ever since the breakup. Rykunyk insists that she’s not trying to destroy the union that she spent so many years helping to build.

“These struggles are nothing new,” she notes. “That’s part of the American labor movement. People have very divergent views. … It would be nice if we were all focused on doing the same thing at the same time, but that’s not the way democratic institutions work.”

SEIU figures in dispute

Further complicating matters is the role of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in the dispute. When UNITE HERE initially began to implode, SEIU president Andy Stern suggested that its workers be absorbed into his union. While UNITE HERE officially rebuffed the advance, Raynor jumped at the opportunity. The group of disaffected workers — which ranges from 40,000 to 150,000 depending on which side you ask — then formed a new SEIU-aligned union called Workers United.

Local 17 officials have directed most of their ire at the powerful, two-million-plus member SEIU, accusing it of meddling in matters that are outside its purview. In a letter sent to other Twin Cities labor officials and allies at social justice organizations, Luneberg’s rhetoric is heated.

“Rather than helping to build a strong more unified movement to fight for jobs that sustain our communities, the SEIU, by forcing a split in UNITE HERE, is undertaking one of the largest inter-union raids in American labor history,” the letter reads. “SEIU’s raid is unprecedented in both its tone and scale.”

Local SEIU officials adamantly deny that their union played any role in the UNITE HERE meltdown.

“Their message is that SEIU caused this, but the facts just betray them,” says Javier Morillo-Alicea, president of SEIU Local 26. “They decided to leave. We did not cause that. I just think it’s outrageous, it’s unfortunate and it’s just plain hysterical.”

Another complication is that Local 26 and Local 17 have traditionally been close allies in the labor movement. Both are considered activist unions and work primarily with low-wage workers, many of them immigrants. In addition, they work out of the same Minneapolis building, just one floor apart. “That is why this is particularly painful,” says Morillo-Alicea.

Julie Schnell, president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, is equally forceful in denying any responsibility for UNITE HERE’s problems. “It is rather disturbing and shocking that those accusations are being made,” she says. “Rather than taking the opportunity to have a discussion directly with SEIU, it appears that they have taken the opportunity to make accusations.”

UNITE HERE officials, however, argue that SEIU has fomented the split by providing funding and support for the fledgling Workers United. In fact, Rykunyk is working out of the offices of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota as she seeks to build the union. Among the alleged tactics utilized by Workers United in wooing workers: sending misleading fliers to their homes promoting the new union and recruiting workers at their job sites.

Martin Goff, organizing director for Local 17, says Workers United is also promising workers lower dues in its campaign to solicit members. “That’s the kind of dirty little game they’re playing,” he says. “It just disgusts.”

Rykunyk, however, denies that Workers United is engaging in any such tactics to recruit workers. “We are not going into their shops soliciting their workers,” she says. “That just is not true.”

Sorting through the rabble of accusations is extremely difficult. But what’s clear is that the contentious dispute is doing little to further the supposed missions of labor unions: improving the lives of workers. At a time when organized labor believes that it has the most friendly administration in decades in the White House, and when the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is supposed to be the chief priority, the infighting has become a burdensome distraction.

“Nobody’s going to come out of this stronger,” says Bernie Hesse, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 and a veteran labor activist. “UNITE’s going to get damaged and HERE’s going to get damaged. The only group that’s going to benefit is the employers.”

There doesn’t appear to be any end in sight to the dispute. Other unions have stepped in to try and mediate a settlement, but with little success. Litigation continues to wind its way through the federal courts and could drag on for months. UNITE HERE officials continue to insist that the merged union will eventually live up to its name.

“We believe that the merger has worked very well, thank you very much,” Luneberg says.

The occasion: a bill designed to overhaul policies for handling criminal intelligence information by making it easier for law enforcement agencies to keep and share information about citizens.

Under the proposed legislation, intelligence data collected on individuals by law enforcement officers could be kept secret for a year. The information would then be made available to the target of the probe unless it meets a series of criteria related to the prosecution of potential crimes.

The legislation would also authorize law enforcement agencies to share intelligence data with other government officials — not limited to police officers — when necessary to protect the public.

The bill was drafted by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and is sponsored by St. Paul DFLer Rep. John Lesch (pictured). (A companion bill has been introduced by Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley.)

In introducing the measure, Lesch acknowledged concerns about civil liberties but argued that some form of legislation is necessary to regulate the sharing of such data.

“A version of this will happen in future years, if not this year,” he said. “I think it’s important that this discussion be had.”

But the proposed legislation has raised alarm bells among peace activists and civil liberties advocates. They fear that the bill is overly broad and would lead to widespread spying on law-abiding citizens.

Teresa Nelson, an attorney with the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the legislation would allow law enforcement agencies to keep “political dossiers” on citizens, while only creating an “illusion of security.”

Bernie Hesse, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, expressed a concern that labor unions would be targeted for engaging in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, like walking picket lines.

“We’re afraid that we might be labeled as a criminal organization,” he said. “We’re very conscious of and appreciate the work that law enforcement agencies do, but we also don’t want to be restricted in some of the things that we have to do to bring about economic justice for workers.”

Retired FBI agent and veteran peace activist Coleen Rowley said that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has been obsessed with collecting intelligence data.

“One of the false notions since 9/11 that leads to this massive intelligence collection has been the idea that we did not have enough dots,” she said. “The failure to connect the dots was the problem, not that there was not enough dots.”

The concerns are exacerbated because of prosecutions stemming from Republican National Convention, which was held in September. Law enforcement relied extensively on undercover informants to infiltrate activist groups and build criminal cases. The most notorious example is the case of the RNC Eight, who are charged with criminally conspiring to disrupt the four-day gathering.

For now the legislation isn’t going anywhere. Lesch acknowledged the concerns about the bill, and moved that it be laid over for further consideration. That motion was adopted unanimously.