Today’s Wall Street Journal features an article explaining how the fight over EFCA is focusing on three senators in the states of Pennsylvania (Arlen Specter), Colorado (Michael Bennet) and Arkansas (Blanche Lincoln). These lawmakers, all up for re-election in 2010, are being heavily lobbied by pro-business and pro-labor groups. It is not known which way these senators will vote (though there are lots of opinions). Specter, for one said “I will vote my conscience.” Scary.
Scarier still are the results of the most recent Gallup poll that was released this week that showed 53% of respondents in support and 39% in opposition to the concept of increased unionization. In an era of “finger in the air” politics, these results do not bode well for those of us who think EFCA is a phenomenally bad idea.
An equally bad idea is to sit back and hope that the politicians do the right thing. After all, you only need to read the headlines to understand which way the winds of sentiment are blowing. Do you know anyone who likes that AIG has paid $165M in bonuses to the “smart guys” who engineered ridiculous bets to enrich themselves, only to have taxpayers bail them out when their stupid bets went south? No, there’s not a lot of goodwill out there towards business leaders at the moment. EFCA can ride to approval on this wave of negative sentiment.
Don’t count on the politicians. Get real and get busy in a bona fide engagement strategy with your employees. As stated in my previous posts, give your people “a dog in the fight” so that they have no need for, or interest in any other dog, especially one that likes to bite.