Sure looks like it:
Card-check lives: ‘A lot of things can happen in a lame-duck session’ (emphasis added)
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is so determined to reward Democrats’ labor union donors that he is now openly discussing the possibility of passing pro-union legislation after voters have already rendered a verdict on the union-friendly 111th Congress.
“A lot of things can happen in a lame-duck session,” he told The Hill today.
Even if voters remove Democrats from power in the November elections, their new choices for Congress will not be seated until January. This leaves nearly two months for the exiting Congress — commonly referred to as a “lame duck” Congress — to enact unpopular laws that might have otherwise cost them more seats in the preceding election.
One such law is the so-called “card-check” bill, which takes away employees’ right to vote secretly against unionizing and skews the balance in favor of labor unions during negotiations with newly unionized employers. Labor unions see the bill as essential in saving their many under-funded multi-employer pension plans. The bill’s binding arbitration provision could force many employers to enter the unions’ underfunded pension plans, taking away their employees’ opportunity to contribute to tax-deferred 401(k) retirement plans.
And they can do it. too.
