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As expected, the Senate defeated a motion to advance the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2010 (PSEECA) (S. 3991) on Wednesday by a vote of 55 to 43, despite a last-ditch attempt to move the measure before the new Congress takes over in January. The PSEECA, which was reintroduced last week, would have provided firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical personnel with collective bargaining rights in states and localities that do not currently provide them; establish minimum standards for collective bargaining rights for public safety officers and give the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) the power to regulate and enforce these rights. The failure to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster means that this measure has little chance of becoming law in the foreseeable future.
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