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The controversial Employee Free Choice Act, which proposes several measures intended to make it easier for labor to organize and win initial contracts, has been a point of contention at this week's AFL-CIO convention. The act has been stalled in Congress for quite some time without enough votes to overcome a filibuster. Senator Arlen Specter, in a talk at the convention, said that he and a small group of Democratic senators have made some changes and come up with a plan to get the act to pass. The changes include a reversal on the card-check proposal (once again requiring secret ballots) as well as procedures for moving to arbitration. AFL-CIO leadership expressed distaste for the proposal saying that the card-check proposal should not be so easily dismissed, and that the proposal still allowed "a government-appointed bureaucrat to make decisions which need to be made at a local business level."