The Federalist Society's Labor & Employment Law Practice Group hosted this panel discussion on Wall Street, Labor Unions, and the Obama Administration: A New Paradigm for Capital and Labor? at the 2009 National Lawyers Convention on Friday, November 13, 2009. Panelists included Mr. Harold Meyerson, Editor-at-Large for the The American Prospect; Ms. Amity Shlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History at the Council on Foreign Relations; Mr. Damon A. Silvers, Associate General Counsel for the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations; Prof. Todd J. Zywicki of George Mason University School of Law; and Hon. Steven J. Law, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel for the U.S. Chamber, of Commerce as the modeator.

Employees in America have long enjoyed and exercised the right to a secret ballot election when deciding whether to be represented by a union. But union leaders are now pushing to end secret ballot elections as part of a comprehensive labor reform bill labeled the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)...

The July 2009 issue of Engage is now online (exclusively a digital issue). Engage provides original scholarship on current, important legal and policy issues. Through its publication, we aim to contribute to the marketplace of ideas in a way that is collegial, measured, and insightful—and hope to spark a higher level of debate and discussion than is all too often found in today’s legal community. [Read now!]

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)1 is among the top items on President Obama’s legislative agenda; it was a clear campaign promise to a core constituency—organized labor. Most Southern business and political leaders strongly oppose EFCA’s practical elimination of secret ballot union representation elections, as well as its imposition of labor contracts through government-controlled interest arbitration. They see EFCA as a rustbelt eff ort to impose a failed business model on sunbelt employers. Because EFCA is perceived to threaten decades of social and economic development progress, aggrieved state legislatures may well retaliate by passing laws that purport to regulate union organizing, strikes, and related activities already regulated by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Opponents of such state laws may argue, based on decades of judicial decisions, that the NLRA pre-empts state  regulation of labor relations. Southern business and political leaders are already preparing to fi ght this battle....