Employers (and their counsel) spent a considerable amount of time, and suffered much angst, following the election of President Obama while worrying about the threatened passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (“EFCA”), a bill touted by the labor movement as the opportunity to revolutionize American labor law and the American workplace. EFCA would require an employer to recognize a union on the basis of support shown by authorization cards; would require a union and an employer to go to arbitration for a first contract if they are unable to agree on one within 120 days; and would impose significant penalties on employers who commit unfair labor practices. EFCA clearly would have passed the Senate and the House and would have been signed by the President if all that was needed was a majority vote. The only hitch in getting organized labor’s top legislative priority completed is that the Democratic Caucus does not have a filibuster-proof majority to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. But even so, the Obama Administration’s ability to make substantial change in the way federal labor law governs management-labor relations is far from dead.

Several recent developments almost guarantee that the legal

framework within which labor and management interact is about to

change, and in ways that do not favor management.