Even as unions debate who to organize, how to organize and how much to spend on organizing, they face a very frightening reality courtesy of the Bush-named majority on the National Labor Relations Board: Decisions that deprive workers of the right to be organized.
In ruling after ruling during the Bush board's years, the NLRB has said that large groups of workers are not "employees" and thus not organizable under labor law. Instead, they're "professionals" or "supervisors" or, worst, "independent contractors."
And those rulings in turn not only circumscribe whom unions can organize, but give employers larger leeway to bully workers, union and non-union.
The NLRB rulings are important, says AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt. Unions win an increasing share of board-run elections: The latest figure is 57 percent. But the number of workers involved in those races, especially the wins, is declining.
And delays in the NLRB election process-- delays business uses to deny or defeat organizing drives -- have led labor to turn to card check certification and voluntary rrecognition to avoid the law's now-pro-business tilt and endless lawsuits.
And that's where the rulings come in, because card check or no, if a worker isn't an "employee," he or she isn't protected by, and organizable under, labor law.
"This isn't just a 'course correction,' despite what (Bush-named NLRB chairman Robert) Battista says," Hiatt said during an AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting earlier this year. "The board is shutting the door on the very, very limited opportunity" many workers have to even seek an NLRB recognition election, he added. Among the curbs:
* Reversal of a 4-year-old NLRB ruling that said teaching assistants and research assistants at the nation's private colleges and universities were "employees" and thus organizable. The American Federation of Teachers and the Auto Workers had mounted intensive drives among those private college TAs and RAs after the prior ruling. Those drives got halted in their tracks by the Bush board.
* A Bush board ruling, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, that said thousands of nurses could be classified as supervisors, even if they only managed orderlies changing bedpans for a few minutes or performed similar such low-level duties.
* A Bush board ruling, again reversing prior precedents, that said contingent workers -- temps -- employed at the same jobs and doing the same tasks and subject to the same rules as their full-time colleagues could not be organized, unless both the employer who hires them from the temp firm and the temp firm itself agree to recognize the results. Hiatt said such agreements would virtually never occur. The temp industry is one of the largest unorganized industries in the U.S., and it is growing.
* Another Bush board ruling, in an organizing drive among bicycle messengers in San Francisco, that said an employer's arbitrary reclassification of those workers as "independent contractors" -- to halt the drive -- did not necessarily break labor law.
In that case, the employer also threatened the messengers' family members and offered bribes to workers to turn against the union. "But none of this warranted special remedies for egregious misconduct," Hiatt said.
But all of these cases limiting the right to be organized could pale beside a board decision on card check, Hiatt warns. In a case involving the UAW and two auto parts suppliers -- Dana and Metaldyne -- the board heeded demands by the anti-worker National Right to Work Committee and accepted briefs on whetther to make it easier for employers to launch decertification drives after card-check recognition is won.
Right now, when the union achieves recognition -- certified by the board -- it has a year of unchallenged peace before anti-union workers, usually egged on by the employer, thee right-to-work crowd, or both, can try to oust it. That "decertification bar" is the same regardless of whether it wins by election, recognition or card check.
The Right to Work Committee wants the NLRB to abolish that bar in card-check wins. Some anti-worker members of the House GOP majority, led by Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., want to go even farther and outlaw card-check entirely.
"As significant as those past cases are, we haven't seen the beginning of it if the board proceeds as it is urged by the Right to Work Foundation, attacking voluntary recognition," Hiatt says. That attack would fly in the face of "the original intent" of the National Labor Relations Act, which was passed exactly 70 years ago, he added.
The NLRA was designed "to have the parties (labor and management) agree on their own" on whether unions achieved majorities in workplaces. "Only if they couldn't, was the election procedure inserted.
"Even in the Taft-Hartley Act," which a GOP-run Congress approved over President Truman's veto and which significantly weakened the NLRA, "you still had a clear allowance for voluntary recognition," Hiatt said.
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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Even as unions debate who to organize, how to organize and how much to spend on organizing, they face a very frightening reality courtesy of the Bush-named majority on the National Labor Relations Board: Decisions that deprive workers of the right to be organized.
In ruling after ruling during the Bush board’s years, the NLRB has said that large groups of workers are not “employees” and thus not organizable under labor law. Instead, they’re “professionals” or “supervisors” or, worst, “independent contractors.”
And those rulings in turn not only circumscribe whom unions can organize, but give employers larger leeway to bully workers, union and non-union.
The NLRB rulings are important, says AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt. Unions win an increasing share of board-run elections: The latest figure is 57 percent. But the number of workers involved in those races, especially the wins, is declining.
And delays in the NLRB election process– delays business uses to deny or defeat organizing drives — have led labor to turn to card check certification and voluntary rrecognition to avoid the law’s now-pro-business tilt and endless lawsuits.
And that’s where the rulings come in, because card check or no, if a worker isn’t an “employee,” he or she isn’t protected by, and organizable under, labor law.
“This isn’t just a ‘course correction,’ despite what (Bush-named NLRB chairman Robert) Battista says,” Hiatt said during an AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting earlier this year. “The board is shutting the door on the very, very limited opportunity” many workers have to even seek an NLRB recognition election, he added. Among the curbs:
* Reversal of a 4-year-old NLRB ruling that said teaching assistants and research assistants at the nation’s private colleges and universities were “employees” and thus organizable. The American Federation of Teachers and the Auto Workers had mounted intensive drives among those private college TAs and RAs after the prior ruling. Those drives got halted in their tracks by the Bush board.
* A Bush board ruling, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, that said thousands of nurses could be classified as supervisors, even if they only managed orderlies changing bedpans for a few minutes or performed similar such low-level duties.
* A Bush board ruling, again reversing prior precedents, that said contingent workers — temps — employed at the same jobs and doing the same tasks and subject to the same rules as their full-time colleagues could not be organized, unless both the employer who hires them from the temp firm and the temp firm itself agree to recognize the results. Hiatt said such agreements would virtually never occur. The temp industry is one of the largest unorganized industries in the U.S., and it is growing.
* Another Bush board ruling, in an organizing drive among bicycle messengers in San Francisco, that said an employer’s arbitrary reclassification of those workers as “independent contractors” — to halt the drive — did not necessarily break labor law.
In that case, the employer also threatened the messengers’ family members and offered bribes to workers to turn against the union. “But none of this warranted special remedies for egregious misconduct,” Hiatt said.
But all of these cases limiting the right to be organized could pale beside a board decision on card check, Hiatt warns. In a case involving the UAW and two auto parts suppliers — Dana and Metaldyne — the board heeded demands by the anti-worker National Right to Work Committee and accepted briefs on whetther to make it easier for employers to launch decertification drives after card-check recognition is won.
Right now, when the union achieves recognition — certified by the board — it has a year of unchallenged peace before anti-union workers, usually egged on by the employer, thee right-to-work crowd, or both, can try to oust it. That “decertification bar” is the same regardless of whether it wins by election, recognition or card check.
The Right to Work Committee wants the NLRB to abolish that bar in card-check wins. Some anti-worker members of the House GOP majority, led by Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., want to go even farther and outlaw card-check entirely.
“As significant as those past cases are, we haven’t seen the beginning of it if the board proceeds as it is urged by the Right to Work Foundation, attacking voluntary recognition,” Hiatt says. That attack would fly in the face of “the original intent” of the National Labor Relations Act, which was passed exactly 70 years ago, he added.
The NLRA was designed “to have the parties (labor and management) agree on their own” on whether unions achieved majorities in workplaces. “Only if they couldn’t, was the election procedure inserted.
“Even in the Taft-Hartley Act,” which a GOP-run Congress approved over President Truman’s veto and which significantly weakened the NLRA, “you still had a clear allowance for voluntary recognition,” Hiatt said.
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.