David Bonior, head of the union-backed group American Rights at Work, visited Portland May 5 as a guest of the City Club of Portland, an influential non-partisan civic affairs organization.

The City Club hosts weekly forums to educate members, and Bonior was joined by Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain and Service Employees Local 503 Executive Director Leslie Frane for a panel on “The Troubles of Unions — Do They Matter?”

Unions are in trouble, the speakers said, and that does matter — to every worker.

Frane said former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich was onto something when he said “Organized labor is an aging doddering prize fighter ... but it’s the only fighter in that corner of the ring.” There’s no other advocate for working people in society, Frane said.

Organized labor made it possible for America to have a sizable middle class, Chamberlain said. As unions have declined in numbers and clout, the middle class has begun to lose ground, and America is polarizing economically, he added.

Bonior, who served 13 terms as a Democratic U.S. congressman from Detroit, left office after losing the Democratic primary for Michigan governor in 2002. A longtime ally of labor, he became chair of American Rights at Work when the group formed in 2003. The group’s focus is the reform of U.S. labor law to make it easier for workers to unionize.

There’s a bill in Congress to do that — the Employee Free Choice Act. It would require employers to recognize a union if a majority of workers sign authorization cards. The two sides would then have a year to bargain a first contract; if they failed to agree, both sides would make their case to an arbitrator, who would issue a binding decision. Lastly, the act would increase penalties on employers who violate worker rights.

In the House, the bill has 216 co-sponsors — two members short of a majority — and a companion bill in the Senate has 43 co-sponsors. In Oregon and Washington, all Democratic members of Congress are co-sponsors, while no Republican members are co-sponsors. Bonior said the bill is likely to pass the House if Democrats retake that body this November. Its fate in the Senate is less certain, because in the Senate, 40 members can often block legislation. Also, President Bush would almost certainly veto such a bill. So Bonior’s group is thinking long-term — to 2008 and beyond.

The labor movement has been unable to win improvements to the National Labor Relations Act, the nation’s basic labor law, for 59 years, ever since a Republican-dominated Congress passed the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over Democratic President Harry Truman’s veto. Union organizers say the law is stacked against unions, and employers have learned how to prevent workers from unionizing. A labor attempt to rewrite the law passed the House in the late 1970s but fell victim to a filibuster in the Senate. Bonior, who was in Congress at that time, says President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, didn’t fight hard enough for it. Nor, he added, did Democratic President Bill Clinton fight hard enough to support a bill banning striker replacements.

On the other hand, Clinton pulled out all the stops to pass NAFTA, which President George Bush Sr. had negotiated. As House Democratic whip, Bonior spent over a year fighting against NAFTA.

In recent years, organized labor has made reforming the labor law a top political priority.

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