Brendan Steinhauser, grassroots manager of FreedomWorks, a non-profit that also opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, protested the rally with signs. He was physically confronted by union workers. Steinhauser said he was pushed and that one of Freedomworks’ female interns had her hair pulled. [View related photos here.]
Steinhauser said, “It’s ironic that the unions claim they were rallying against worker intimidation when they sought to intimidate FreedomWorks supporters by trashing our signs, pushing us, and threatening us with physical violence. They were not interested in any democratic debate, and only representatives from the Socialist Workers Party would actually talk to us.”
FreedomWorks plans to post video footage of their confrontational interactions with union supporters.
On Wednesday, Majority Leader Harry Reid interrupted debate on energy legislation to file for a cloture vote in the Senate on the Employee Free Choice Act. A vote to end debate on the Employee Free Choice Act and proceed to a final vote of passage on the bill, called cloture, could occur as soon as Thursday.
The Employee Free Choice Act passed in the House on March 1, mostly on party lines. Only 2 Democrats voted against the bill. Thirteen Republicans crossed party lines to vote for it.
Greg Mourad, who specializes in legislative affairs for the National Right to Work Committee, said he does not expect the Senate to pass a cloture vote on the bill. He said Democrats just need to “throw a bone to their labor union bosses.”
He also said it was “obscene” that Democrat leadership would “interrupt important debate in immigration and war issues to have a throw away vote they know is going to lose on an issue as evil as card check.”
He was not hopeful that defeat on a cloture vote would discourage Big Labor from continuing to pressure members of Congress to pass bills favorable to unions. “They [unions] have spent a billion dollars each election cycle for the last 10 years,” Mourad said. “They want a massive return on that massive investment.”
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