Apparently, Obama decided to use his Labor Day weekend radio address not to pay tribute to all that organized labor did to create the middle class in this country, but to try to persuade voters that he is doing enough to save it.

The fate of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) over the course of the past year and a half has been largely determined by the White House. Rahm Emanuel would not let it come up for a vote until after health care was passed, and by that time the Democrats no longer had 60 votes in the Senate. But its evolution is also intimately tied to the electoral prospects of Harry Reid and Arlen Specter, and unless you understand one, you can’t understand the other.

In a PowerPoint presentation released as part of the Congressional investigation into Toyota’s “unintended acceleration” problems, the car manufacturer reveals that the delay of the Employee Free Choice Act was a “win” for its Washington lobbying office.

Blanche Lincoln issued a statement about whys he joined the filibuster to oppose Craig Becker for the NLRB. Basically, she filibustered Becker because she wants to filibuster the Employee Free Choice Act.

If unions take this deal, it’s a sell-out of epic proportions. I’m hard pressed to think of a deal unions could cut in health care that would cause more long-term damage to not just the credibility of the labor movement, but the middle class.

Politicians, business executives, labor leaders, none of them seem to get it (or at least want to acknowledge it): Our broken health care system is the 800 pound gorilla sitting on our economy, and every year, the gorilla gains another hundred pounds. Health insurance is a massive piece of overhead cost, killing our competitiveness in the world market. The problem is not only getting worse, it is getting worse at an increasingly rapid rate. This current health care reform bill is good on coverage expansion, but extremely weak on cost control–and that is a very bad news.

After being ridiculed from the left and right for dodging a question, McMahon’s campaign issued a clarifying response, in which she equated her opposition to terror trials to her opposition to “card check,” among other issues.

Hotel housekeepers around the country have had enough. Yesterday, more than 350 housekeepers and their supporters launched a seven-city nationwide “Hope for Housekeepers” tour.

They kicked it off in Long Beach, Calif., carrying a seven-foot by 60-foot “Hope Quilt” on a mile-long pilgrimage from the Hilton Long Beach to the Hyatt Regency Long Beach to symbolize their struggle for decent working conditions.

“Hope for Housekeepers” is a national movement of women, founded by Hyatt housekeepers across the country, to stop the abuse of women in the hotel industry and bring a message of hope to Hyatt housekeepers and women working as housekeepers across the globe. The tour will travel to San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Antonio, Boston, Indianapolis and Chicago.

As Jane has pointed out, Penny Pritzker, of the massively wealthy Pritzker family who chairs four major corporations, including Hyatt, is a vocal opponent of workers’ freedom to form unions, strongly opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Earlier this year, Pritzker joined with other billionaires to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. She told President Obama she is opposed to majority verification (card-check), which would give workers another choice—a labor board election is the other option—when deciding whether to join a union.

Today, it’s my honor to turn this space to Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) General President Mike Sullivan, leader of one of the first unions to publicly state the union is pulling all support from the Blue Dogs because of their efforts to kill real health care reform.

Remember last November? I still do.

I remember the pride I felt watching President-elect Obama and his family standing on that stage in Chicago, bolstered by the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans and the promise of change finally coming to our nation.

Lanny is a partner in Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and was a registered lobbyist for Whole Foods in the first quarter of 2009 for the low low price of $40,000. Orrick filed a “termination report” on March 1 (PDF), but somehow Lanny was still trying to put together an anti-Employee Free Choice effort on behalf of Whole Foods and Starbucks in late March. Lanny wanted to see if he could bring everyone together and get them to agree to EFCA just without card check or binding arbitration or anything included in the original bill, which lasted about 48 hours until the Chamber landed on his head and Lanny bailed.