The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was introduced again yesterday in the U.S. House and Senate (the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also held a hearing yesterday on the topic, and you can watch the video and read the testimonies here).  According to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), “Just as the National Labor Relations Act, the 40 hour week and the minimum wage helped to pull us out of the Great Depression and into a period of unprecedented prosperity, so too will the Employee Free Choice Act help reinvigorate our economy.  Today is one of those defining moments in history as we introduce legislation that puts power back into the hands of the people who are truly the backbone of this economy.”

The folks over at the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) have a different point of view.  In an email sent out yesterday, RILA stated “In response to [the] bill introduction, and as part of our ongoing comprehensive approach to defeating EFCA, RILA and our partners in the campaign to defeat EFCA will be ramping up efforts in the coming weeks to draw attention to the harm posed by this radical proposal.”

And so describes the great divide between the business community (that overwhelmingly opposes EFCA) and democratic politicians and the unions (the main supporters of this bill).  This will be a long and heated debate, and although President Obama reiterated his support of EFCA last week in a videotaped message to the AFL-CIO, several key Democrats in the Senate are wavering in their support of the bill, according to a front page story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

I first wrote about EFCA before the election (see “Record Fuel Prices Today, Record Labor Costs Tomorrow?“) and several times since then (click here).  I have yet to come across a logistics professional, especially in the logistics service provider (3PL) industry, that openly supports EFCA.  The industry is concerned about increased labor costs, loss of labor flexibility, and work stoppages.  Rightly or wrongly, when I think about organized labor in logistics, the two things that come immediately to mind are the UPS strike of 1997 and the West Coast Ports strike of 2002, two events that in my opinion resulted in more harm than good.

This Friday, the New England CSCMP Roundtable is having a Supply Chain Executive Breakfast where Russ Sylvia, Director of Human Resources – Global Supply Chain from Covidien, will discuss “the potential implications of the Employee Free Choice Act and Covidien’s approach to preparing for its possible enactment.”  If you’re from the area and a CSCMP member, you can register for the breakfast at this link (non-CSCMP members can register here).  I expect many other events to focus on EFCA in the weeks and months ahead.

The bottom line: labor management will become a top priority for logistics executives this year, which is why we’ve written so much about labor management systems over the past few weeks, and why technology vendors like Manhattan Associates and RedPrairie are actively promoting their Workforce Management solutions, as well as providing their perspective on the topic (e.g. see “Ready for the Employee Free-Choice Act?” blog posting on CIO Magazine’s website).

But I’d love to hear from you, especially if you support EFCA.  What is your position of the potential impact of EFCA on logistics?  What actions (if any) are you taking to prepare?  Is now the right time for EFCA, in light of the economic crisis, or should this legislation be introduced down the road, once the economy recovers?