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Workers Expose Bush NLRB Agenda |
Over the past two weeks, thousands of America’s workers took to the streets to highlight an issue few people are aware of—and as a result, have moved it up on the nation’s political agenda. In 21 cities, workers protested the Bush National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) failure to do its job and protect workers’ freedom to join a union.
AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff, who took part in several of the actions nationwide, says:
The rapid grassroots mobilization of workers responding to this pending crisis revealed the extent to which a bad decision from the labor board could spark disruption at hospitals, health care facilities and other worksites.
The week of action focused on a series of cases now before the NLRB known as “Kentucky River,” in which the NLRB soon will decide whether many nurses, building and construction trades workers, journalists and others should be classified as “supervisors.” If the NLRB expands the definition of supervisor to include such workers, an estimated 8 million workers no longer will have the federally protected right to form a union.
Among those workers, Linda Warino, has spent the past 33 years caring for patients as a nurse. She says her union, the Ohio Nurses Association/UAN, empowers her and provides resources to bolster her expertise on health standards and practices. This knowledge is invaluable when the hospital tries to implement practices that might result in harm to patient care.
For Warino, the worst part of the pending Kentucky River decisions is the obvious lack of understanding about what charge nurses do in their daily work:
Charge nurse duties have nothing to do with managerial work. They have to do with patient care work. Everyone knows I’m not their boss, the only people who don’t are the National Labor Relations Board.
If the NLRB thinks this change will help health care, that is absolutely not true. These decisions will further compromise patient care by taking away nurses’ ability to voice their concerns in a safe environment.
Despite the far-reaching consequences of these decisions, the NLRB has refused to hear oral arguments and has denied union requests to hear oral arguments in these cases. You can act now and contact your members of Congress to tell Bush’s labor board to reverse its decision and allow oral arguments in the “Kentucky River” cases.
In Albuquerque, N.M., on July 18, state Attorney General Patricia Madrid joined hundreds of workers rallying at the local federal building. Madrid, a candidate for Congress, told workers:
The Bush administration and the Republican Congress have spent six years chipping away workers protections and workers rights—including the rights of disabled workers, temporary employees and graduate employees. Every nurse, every firefighter, every teacher, every worker in our community deserves respect and dignity on the job.
Today we are calling on the National Labor Relations Board to do the right thing. Revising the definition of supervisor to try to block workers from organizing is wrong.
Our country and our state have a proud tradition of strong unions representing and protecting workers. That must not change.
In other recent actions:
- In Buffalo, N.Y., today, nurses and their allies rallied outside the federal building. In a letter to The Buffalo News, Ann Converso, vice president of the United American Nurses, declares “… nurses who have union rights aren’t going to give up those rights. We call on Buffalo hospitals to recognize the roles and responsibilities of nurses by voluntarily recognizing the union rights of all nurses.”
- In Hartford, Conn., hundreds of workers rallied at the federal building. After the rally, they took a petition signed by the entire state congressional delegation to the regional NLRB office calling on the labor board to hold oral arguments on the Kentucky River cases.
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