Reid: Vote on card check bill, a labor priority, likely in summer

Las Vegas Sun
By Lisa Mascaro
Tue, Jan 27, 2009

Washington — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate will likely turn its attention this summer to the Employee Free Choice Act — the union organizing bill being watched in Las Vegas and across the nation.

Standing beside fair-pay advocate Lilly Ledbetter late last week after the Senate passed landmark legislation named in her honor, Reid made clear that the wage discrimination bill was not the last on the labor agenda.

The union organizing bill, sometimes called card check, is an “important piece of legislation,” he said. “We’re going to get to that,” Reid said. “We’re hoping to get to it sometime this summer.”

The Senate will be where the action is on the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill passed the House in 2007, but died on a near-party line vote after only one Republican crossed over to support it in the Senate. With an expanded Democratic majority under Reid, it could be closer to passage.

The bill would make it easier for unions to organize and would likely bring union representation to workers at the remaining casinos on the Strip still without it.

The legislation would allow workers interested in forming a union to simply sign a card, returning to a system that had been in place for decades, until business persuaded Congress to require secret-ballot elections.

The secret ballots could still be used, but the new bill would provide the option of organizing with the sign-up cards. Unions say management often drags out the elections, using the time to pressure workers to vote no.

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Stop the Yucca Mountain Radioactive Waste Dump

by Joel Wendland

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is in a hurry. This month that department filed a license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build and use the proposed nuclear dump site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The DOE dumped something like 30 million documents on the NRC and insisted on an expedited process, in order to limit public scrutiny of the $70 billion project and to get it done before George W. Bush leaves office.

The problem is the DOE has not adequately explained a number of key safety problems and political issues. According to Beyond Nuclear, an organization that advocates alternatives to nuclear weapons and unsafe nuclear energy, the DOE has yet to present the NRC with proposals on "a final repository design; final national transport plan; final design for the 'Transport, Aging, and Disposal' canister in which the waste would be 'permanently' sealed; final EPA regulations on radiation releases; and meaningful treatment of Western Shoshone Indian land rights at Yucca under the 'peace and friendship' Treaty of Ruby Valley signed by the U.S. government in 1863."

In short, they haven't explained how they are going to safely move dangerous nuclear waste through your town and prevent accidents or leaks and how the waste will be stored safely (permanently) at Yucca Mountain and avoid the hazards caused by earthquakes or other geological events at the mountain.

Most importantly, the DOE plan will dump radioactive waste on or near land belong to the Western Shoshone nation. This act would be another in a long, sad history of the relations between the U.S. government and Indian nations.

To speak up on this, go to Senator Harry Reid's "Petition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Reject the License Application for a Nuclear Waste Dump at Yucca Mountain." Sign and circulate.