Our brothers and sisters at the Communications Workers of America this week are launching the ad above even as the Teamsters are fighting for filibuster reform.
Teamster General President Jim Hoffa wrote an op-ed in the Detroit News last week explaining why. He wrote,
The Employee Free Choice Act would be the law of the land today if it weren't for the modern filibuster.
The Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA, would have made it easier to organize a union. In 2008, it easily passed the House of Representatives. A solid majority of U.S. senators supported the bill. But they never got a chance to vote on it, and EFCA died.
The tragedy of EFCA was how easy it was for anti-worker senators to prevent a vote on the legislation. All they had to do was threaten to block it, forcing the Senate Leader to come up with 60 votes rather than a simple majority. No one had to stand on the Senate floor and talk around the clock the way Jimmy Stewart did in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." No one had to miss even one fundraiser.
The modern filibuster makes it far too easy for a tyrannical minority to strangle the democratic process. It's time to reform it and restore majority rule.Read the whole thing here.
