WASHINGTON – New data showing labor unions won nearly two-thirds of private ballot organizing elections last year is prompting some business groups to question the need for Congress to pass a bill that would make it even easier to form unions.

Union officials say the latest figures from the National Labor Relations Board are misleading because anti-union intimidation prevents many elections from happening at all.

Unions won 63 percent of representation elections conducted by the NLRB in fiscal 2008, a 4 percent increase from the previous year and the highest level since the mid-1950s, according to figures released last week.

“This new data clearly demonstrates that the current system, if anything, is working to the unions’ advantage,” said Daniel Yager, chief policy officer of the HR Policy Association, a group of 250 Fortune 500 companies.

Labor leaders are urging Congress to pass a bill that would take away an employer’s right to demand a secret ballot election when workers want to organize a union. The Employee Free Choice Act — also known as card check — would instead permit a union to be certified if a majority of workers at a plant sign union authorization cards.

Republicans are expected to filibuster the bill if it comes to a vote later this year, and Democrats are working on a compromise version that could garner at least 60 votes in the Senate.

Business groups argue there is no need to effectively eliminate secret ballot elections if unions are winning most NLRB elections.

AFL-CIO spokeswoman Alison Omens claims the numbers don’t tell the full story. Under current law, an election is held within 30-60 days if 30 percent of workers sign union authorization cards. Omens said many of those elections never happen because employers threaten workers not to support the union.

“By the time you get to an election, corporations have so poisoned the well that the petition for a union is withdrawn in many cases,” Omens said.

Another problem for unions, Omens said, is that even if they win an election, between one-third and one-half of unions never get a first contract. Businesses can use legal delaying tactics that put off a contract for years and often turn the union back altogether, she said.

A key provision of the card check bill would require binding arbitration if unions and management cannot agree on a first contract.

WASHINGTON – Several Supreme Court justices questioned on Wednesday whether AT&T Corp. is discriminating against former employees by paying smaller retirement checks to women who took pregnancy leaves in the 1960s and 1970s.

The court heard arguments in the case of four women who lost seniority credit when they took maternity leave before passage of a 1979 law that barred the practice of treating pregnancy leaves differently from other disability leaves.

The size of retirement paychecks for thousands of women hangs in the balance as the court considers whether to credit decades-old maternity leaves in calculating pension benefits.

Justice David Souter asked why payment of the lower retirement benefits now isn’t an act of discrimination.

AT&T attorney Carter Phillips told the justices that AT&T has long since changed its leave policy to comply with the 1979 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. But he argued that law does not retroactively apply to old pregnancy leaves. He is appealing the ruling of a closely divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the company’s conduct is a continuing violation of federal employment discrimination law.

“It is not a facially discriminatory policy” as it operates now, he said.

Phillips also claimed that employees should have brought their claims decades ago, when the company first made the decision affecting seniority.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in the 1970s argued several key employment discrimination cases before the high court, told Phillips the denial of pregnancy leave credit had very little immediate impact on the women at the time, but carried the potential for future consequences upon retirement. When the women returned from leave “there was nothing to be done,” she said.

Justice Stephen Breyer said it appears the company is still applying the benefits program today in a way that was deemed unlawful decades ago.

Phillips said each paycheck did not create a new violation of law.

“This is more like the present effects of past discrimination and therefore not actionable at this time,” Phillips said.

Kevin Russell, attorney for the four women, argued that “a fresh act of discrimination” takes place every time a reduced pension payment is made to one of the women today.

“The plan discriminates on its face,” Russell said.

Justice Antonin Scalia wasn’t buying Russell’s argument.

“I don’t understand why you say the retirement plan is facially discriminatory now,” Scalia said.

Phillips also raised the possibility that a decision favoring the women could jeopardize funding for pension programs that were not expected to account for the lost seniority.

The Bush administration has urged the court to reverse the San Francisco-based appeals court. Justice Department attorney Lisa Blatt argued that nothing in the 1979 law indicated it was meant to be retroactive and that Congress could have explicitly done so if that’s what it intended. She said a decision favoring the women might harm other employees who could lose expected benefits if the company cannot afford to put more money into the pension system.

That concern about funding hit a chord with Justice Anthony Kennedy, who asked whether a ruling against AT&T could jeopardize its ability to pay benefits. Russell said AT&T could afford it.

“It could be millions of dollars but it’s a small amount of a plan that has tens of billions of dollars in it,” Russell said.

That didn’t suit Phillips, who pointed out the nation’s dire financial situation.

“Given what’s happened to my plans over the last couple of months, I would worry about what the impact is,” Phillips said.

The high court’s decision is expected to resolve a split among federal appeals courts on the issue.

The case is AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen, 07-543.

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Wednesday withdrew the ambassadorial nomination of businessman Sam Fox after Democrats denounced Fox for giving money to a controversial conservative group that undermined Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerry, D-Mass., had criticized Fox because of a $50,000 contribution that Fox made in 2004 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Many Democrats blame the group for sinking Kerry’s presidential hopes that year after it aired a series of controversial ads that impugned Kerry’s military record in the Vietnam War.

A vote on the Fox nomination to be ambassador to Belgium had been expected Wednesday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On Tuesday, Kerry’s Vietnam crew mates sent a letter urging committee members to oppose Fox’s nomination. A copy of the letter was obtained by The Associated Press.

“In our judgment, those who finance smears and lies of combat veterans don’t deserve to represent America on the world stage,” said the letter signed by James Rassman and 10 other Vietnam Swift Boat veterans who served with Kerry.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said Tuesday he opposes the nomination because Fox “refused to apologize for his behavior” during his confirmation hearing last month.

“U.S. Ambassadors need to be both responsible and credible, and Mr. Fox’s support for an organization known to have spread falsehoods illustrates neither,” said Dodd, who is seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Fox, 77, of St. Louis, is national chairman of the Jewish Republican Coalition and has donated well over $1 million to Republican candidates and causes since the 1990s, according to Federal Election Commission records. He was deemed a “ranger” by Bush’s campaign for helping to raise at least $200,000.

Kerry grilled Fox about the Swift Boat contribution during the Feb. 27 hearing, asking him why he gave money to a group that was “smearing and spreading lies” and had been condemned by members of both political parties.

Fox replied that he considers Kerry a hero. But he refused to call the contribution a mistake.

“When I’m asked, I just generally give,” Fox told Kerry.

Fox has not backed down in a series of written responses to Kerry since the hearing.

“Senator Kerry and other members of the committee still have questions for Mr. Fox, and it’s fair to say the concerns raised during the February 27 hearing haven’t vanished,” Kerry spokeswoman Amy Brundage said.

Complicating matters is the presence of three Democratic presidential hopefuls on the committee – the chairman, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.; and Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Dodd.

At the end of the hearing last month, Obama told Fox he found his testimony “somewhat unsatisfying.”

“I would have preferred you saying, you know, ‘In retrospect looking back, contributing to the Swift Boat campaign was a mistake and I wish I hadn’t done it,”‘ Obama told Fox.

Fox has garnered the public support of Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., both of whom testified for him.