Dmitri Iglitzin
 

It is true that in 1993, as one of his first acts as president, President Clinton issued an Executive Order prohibiting federal agencies from doing business with employers that permanently replace striking workers. That order, however, was overturned by the federal courts and never heard from again.
 

The Clinton-Gore Administration also supported legislation that would have prohibited companies from permanently replacing striking workers, but it didn't push hard for the law. Instead, the Clinton Administration expended its political capital on pushing for NAFTA and GATT, so-called "free-trade" deals that had a negative, not positive, impact on the rights and prosperity of workers in the United States.  
 

Before that, in 1977 and 1978, President Carter used his political capital to push through the Panama Canal Treaty, rather than to support much-needed reforms of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
 

So if labor isn't going to get burned again by a Democratic President, it needs to be sure, heading into the primaries, of precisely where the candidates stand on an Agenda for Labor. Items on this agenda should, at a minimum, include:
 

1. Enact the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
 

The EFCA is the labor movement's current number one legislative priority. It passed the House of Representatives in March of this year, by a vote of 241 to 185, and is currently pending in the Senate.
 

The EFCA would enshrine the principle of majority signup (allowing workers to form unions based on a written showing of majority support), mandate binding arbitration for first contracts where the parties cannot agree and impose financial penalties on employers for firing pro-union employees. In doing so, it would dramatically improve the ability of workers to unionize and improve their working conditions. An April, 2007 study by the Campaign for America's Future estimates that passage of the EFCA would increase union membership by 10%, providing an additional 3,537,625 people with health insurance and 2,773,045 more people with pensions.
 

2. Enact the Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Trade Workers (RESPECT) Act.
 

Sponsored in the Senate by Senator (and candidate) Dodd, and introduced simultaneously in the House and the Senate on March 22, 2007, this law would reverse some particularly egregious recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, the Oakwood decisions, and narrow the definition of "supervisors" excluded from the protection of federal labor law, thereby permitting millions more workers to be represented by unions, if they so choose.
 

3. Equalize union access to unorganized workers at the workplace during organizing campaigns.
 

According to a recent study by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois, 91 percent of employers force employees to attend anti-union meetings one-on-one with supervisors. Unions, on the other hand, have no access to unorganized workers on the job.
Numerous states are currently contemplating a state-level solution to this problem, known as the Worker Freedom Act (WFA), which forbids employers from using "mandatory meetings" to force their personal beliefs on workers.   WFA was introduced into eight state legislatures in 2007. It also was passed by the Colorado legislature in 2006, before being vetoed by the governor. Will the candidates support addressing this problem at the federal level?  
 

4. Insist on labor standards in future trade agreements, and work to modify or alleviate the impact of existing agreements.
 

The negative impact of NAFTA and similar free trade agreements on working people in this country is well-documented. Fixing the existing trade agreements and making sure that any new ones are both worker and environment-friendly, has to be on any labor agenda for 2008.
 

5. Extend collective bargaining rights to supervisors.
 

According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, as far back as 2002, there were more than 8.6 million private-sector "first-line" supervisors, not much different from "leads" or "foremen," all of whom are currently denied the right to engage in collective bargaining. Many states allow public-sectorsupervisors to have the right to organize and be represented by a union. There is no good reason why private-sector supervisors, too, should not be
given these rights.
 

6. Repeal section 14(b), the so-called "Right-to-Work" provision of the NLRA.
 

Under the original terms of the NLRA, unions everywhere in the country were permitted to negotiate contracts that require all represented employees to pay their "fair share" of the cost of that representation. This was changed in 1947, over President Truman's veto, and 22 states have since declared such contracts unlawful. An effort to repeal this provision passed the House in 1965, but was successfully filibustered in the Senate. After 60 years, it's time to eliminate this provision and extend equal rights to unions throughout the country.  
 

7. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act's ban on "secondary boycotts."
 

In many industries, the project owner's or building owner's decision about whether to use a union or non-union contracting firm is the single most important factor in deciding both whether a job will be performed by unionized workforces and whether the workers will be fairly compensated.
Yet under current law, unions cannot challenge a parent corporation's directives to a subsidiary; they cannot challenge a building manager's directives to a janitorial service, and they cannot challenge any decision to change a subcontract—even if the decision is to cease using a union-signatory firm that is paying a living wage to its employees, causing all of those employees to lose their jobs. Where, candidate, do you stand on this issue?
 

These will not be easy questions for the Democratic candidates to answer. If they give the answers labor wants to hear, their ability to position themselves as centrist, pro-business, Democratic Leadership Council-type candidates, come the general election, will inevitably suffer. 
 

But if they waffle, or give answers that suggest a lack of willingness to support these types of legal changes, another kind of veneer will be lost—that of being a powerful and outspoken advocate for labor. One more illusion will have been stripped away, and Democratic voters of all stripes will be able to make a clearer, better-informed choice regarding who should be the party's flag-bearer in November of 2008.
 

Dmitri Iglitzin is a labor law attorney in Seattle with the firm of Schwerin Campbell Barnard & Iglitzin, LLP, and is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington School of Law.