Now that Senator Arlen Specter has switched his membership from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, one may ask “will he fall in line with the rest of his party and support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)?”
A spokesman for the Teamsters Union stated that “this certainly gives us more opportunity to talk to [Specter] and address our concerns about his position on the Employee Free Choice Act.” Such a nuanced statement certainly portends a likelihood that Senator Specter may go along with his new party, especially if it adopts certain modifications that make the EFCA more palatable to the senator.
Labor leaders and their congressional supporters need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster on EFCA. With Specter in the fold, they’ll have 59 votes. All they will need is for Al Franken to be officially seated as the new senator from Minnesota.
Though Specter has said that his party switch does not mean that he will vote in favor of the EFCA, he has indicated that he would like to see changes in the language of the bill. If such changes are forthcoming, one may logically assume that Senator Specter will give his assent to the passage of the bill. To help engineer Senator Specter’s support, Teamsters’ President James P. Hoffa recently met with the senator so that they could discuss the EFCA. Hoffa need not have reminded Specter that Pennsylvania has 80,000 Teamster members as well as thousands of members of other unions, the vast majority of whom will vote next year for their senator.
Does anyone doubt that with a few cosmetic face-saving changes to the EFCA bill that Senator Specter will not vote for the bill? One doesn’t switch parties to become a pariah in one’s new party.
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