The National Labor Relations Board is Abominable

After coming home from Paris and dealing with striking railway workers for ten days it was interesting to come home to news of the abominable National Labor Relations Board. It is a bit of old news, but ironic that the workers in France, if unhappy - strike, upset the entire country and are joined in unison by Air France workers, all fonctionaire workers, teachers, students (yes, students), the museums, etc. It was both a little frustrating and completely invigorating. I heard about this assault by the Bush administration on labor by the NLRB, but after seeing real labor power in France, it strikes me as ever more important for the progressive movement to get behind labor and push for labor reform as soon as possible.

Recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board has unions and pro labor folks up in arms and the thought of a democratic presidency (one that is truly pro labor, not Bill Clinton) is also invigorating.

The National Labor Relations Board was established to encourage "the practice and procedure of collective bargaining" and to protect the "exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid and protection."

For years unions have been saying that the NLRB system is broken and has become a tool of corporate interests and not the worker interests it was supposed to serve. That is why the labor movement and its progressive allies are pushing to amend the law with the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). "But the recent NLRB decisions say that the corporate Bush backers are not satisfied. They want the law completely eviscerated before Bush leaves office to make it even more difficult for a new President and Congress to address the problems of the denial of worker rights in America."

The Change to Win Federation says that in the month of September alone, on the eve of the close of the fiscal year, the Bush NLRB issued 61, mostly anti-worker, decisions -- fully 20 percent of its total output of decisions for the year. Greg Tarpinian, the executive director of the Change to Win Federation wrote recently and most eloquently:

The onslaught of decisions that are a direct violation of the intent of the National Labor Relations Act that established the NLRB is particularly interesting given that more than half of the decisions were on cases that are over four years old. For an agency notorious in its use of delay as a way to deprive workers of their rights, the sudden spate of decisions suggests that the Bush Administration is in full court press mode and will use its last months in office to gut as much as it can in the area of worker, consumer, environmental, and other protections.

This President has not only run roughshod over the Constitution, he has also destroyed the administrative rules by which our progressive laws have been enforced. And he plans on finishing the job before he leaves office. Labor, consumer, environmental, and other advocates for the American Dream need to link arms together to stop him.

Here are some examples of the assault on labor cases. I am taking this from the Change to Win Federation website.

Harder to join a union, easier to get rid of a union

Dana Corp., 351 NLRB No. 28 (Sept. 29, 2007) – In its fervor to undermine majority sign-up - the right of a majority of workers to sign a card to express their desire to gain a voice on the job and join a union - the Board reversed 40 years of precedent and invented a new rule: even when more than 50% of the workers sign cards indicating they want a union and the employer respects that choice, a 30% minority of employees may, within 45 days of voluntary recognition, petition to decertify the union, prevent the parties from bargaining, and force employees to suffer through the NLRB’s lengthy and divisive election process. Adding insult to injury, the NLRB ruled that employers would henceforth be required to post notices making sure employees are aware of their rights to overturn the union’s representation, but the notice does not include any mention of employees’ right to form a union free from interference.

Wurtland Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, 351 NLRB No. 50 (Sept. 29, 2007) – The Board took the opposite view about the reliability of signing a card when it comes to getting rid of a union! In this case, the NLRB ruled that signatures on a petition were sufficient to get rid of an existing union and the Board rejected its own election process, arguing that employees who want to get rid of their union should not have to endure the delay involved in a decertification election. In Dana, the NLRB said that signature cards were not true indicators of employee support.

Harder for illegally fired workers to get back pay

St. George Warehouse, 351 NLRB No. 42 (Sept. 30, 2007) – The NLRB reversed 45 years of precedent and shifted burdens of proof onto illegally fired workers, making it harder for those workers to recover back pay.

The Grosvenor Resort, 350 NLRB No. 86 (Sept. 30, 2007) - The Board announced a new rule that workers who were found to have been illegally fired but who wait more than two weeks before giving up on getting their job back and looking for a new job work will be denied back pay for that period so as not to “reward idleness.”

Easier for Employers to Fire and Intimidate Union Supporters

BP Amoco Chemical-Chocolate Bayou, 351 NLRB No. 39 (Sept. 29, 2007) - The Board ruled that it was perfectly permissible for an employer to target union supporters for layoffs, and then to force them to sign release forms, as a condition to receiving severance pay, that prevented them or anyone else from challenging the legality of their termination.

This is a shocking assault on the power of the American worker. Know that every assault on any union worker is assault on all American workers, chipping away at what the labor movement achieved in America over the past 100 years. Take action and condemn the Bush administration's assault on workers.