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Labor is too quiet as Bush's NLRB mulls anti-union cases

Date Posted: August 4 2006

By Harry Kelber

Over the past five years, President Bush's appointees to the National Labor Relations Board have taken away or "severely restricted" the rights of millions of workers to organize into unions and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining, according to a July 13 report issued by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The 25-page report cites cases by which the Labor Board excluded large categories of workers from being represented by a union by ruling they are not employees, but rank as supervisors.

  • The NLRB decided that disabled workers in rehabilitation programs do not constitute employees, depriving 45,000 disabled workers of the right to join a union.
  • The Board also found that graduate research and teaching assistants are not employees because their primary relationship with the university is educational rather than economic. This decision, the report said, has denied more than 51,000 graduate teaching and research assistants and proctors at 1,561 private universities the right to organize.
  • It decided that temporary employees at a nursing home could not join a union with permanent employees unless the temporary agency and the employer agreed to the arrangement. The decision severely restricts the basic rights of more than two million temporary and contract workers.

"President Bush has filled the NLRB with anti-union members who have made it more difficult for workers to organize a labor union," Rep. Miller said in a statement releasing the report. NLRB has "used double standards, rationales and unfair, inconsistent rulings to give employers more power over workers," he said.

Is labor ready to fight NLRB threat to 8 million workers? The pro-Bush NLRB will be considering three cases, known collectively as "Kentucky River," in which its decision can exclude as many as eight million workers from the protection of a union if they can be classified as supervisors.

The Board's definition of "supervisor" can embrace any individual who assigns or "responsibly directs" employees using independent judgment. That could include tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, construction workers and workers in other occupations.

The Board has refused to hold hearings on the three cases, thereby giving its members a free hand to apply their anti-union biases. An unfavorable NLRB ruling could cripple union organizing for years to come.

So what has been the response of labor's two rival federations? Change to Win has done nothing, except to post a news item on its website that deplores the NLRB's anti-union move.

The AFL-CIO had a "Week of Action" in 20 cities, where speakers denounced the NLRB. But that had little effect in Washington.

The AFL-CIO's "civil disobedience" exercise in front of the Washington's NLRB building was a farce. The ten protesters who locked arms to block the front of the building were disappointed, because the police were ordered not to arrest them. "Civil disobedience" that lasts 15 to 30 minutes can't be taken seriously. This one was a fake.

If 8 million workers will be seriously affected by the NLRB ruling, why can't the AFL-CIO mobilize even one percent - 80,000 - to come to Washington to raise all kinds of hell to show that they are really enraged at what Bush is doing to them - and without a hearing?

It is unlikely that a torrent of e-mails and fiery statements on our websites will convince Bush's NLRB surrogates to reverse course. So what then?

This article was made available via the International Labor Communications Association.