Worker friendly?

Democrats in the House are wasting no time paying back two of their biggest benefactors: organized labor and the trial bar.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Wednesday that Democrats will hold votes Friday on two measures that are sure to please both union bosses and trial lawyers while adding another burden to American businesses struggling to cope with a recession.

The first proposal would overturn a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding modest limits on pay discrimination lawsuits. The other would eliminate damage caps for pay bias awards and restrict defenses that can be offered by employers in such cases.

"This is an ominous sign for business," Randel Johnson, vice president for labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told Bloomberg News.

In the Supreme Court case, justices ruled 5-4 that an Alabama woman waited too long under federal law to file a lawsuit alleging her employer was paying her less than men who were doing the same work.

The decision outraged many Democrats, who argued that placing a clock on such claims imposes an undue burden on aggrieved workers. But the alternative -- embraced by House Democrats in their proposed legislation -- would leave companies open to defending themselves against lawsuits dealing with decisions that are decades old and were made by people who are long retired or even deceased.

As far as eliminating federal caps on punitive and compensatory damages in pay discrimination cases, this is the Holy Grail for trial lawyers. But unlimited and unpredictable damage awards in medical malpractice litigation played a role in rising health care costs and even led doctors to flee many states without damage limits. Imposing similar conditions on small businesses would likewise drive up costs and discourage entrepreneurship.

In fact, the current laws represent a reasonable effort to protect companies from excessive litigation or runaway juries while still allowing those with legitimate discrimination claims to seek redress in the courts.

Many Democrats, though, don't see it that way. The legislation, said Bill Samuel of the AFL-CIO, reveals that Speaker Nancy Pelosi "intends to send a message that the House is going to focus on the needs of workers first."

Perhaps. But coupled with the rest of Big Labor's agenda -- especially the push to all but eliminate secret ballot elections as a means to organize -- these proposals could have a crippling effect on America's small businesses. And that doesn't sound very "worker friendly."