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AFL-CIO Files International Complaint Charging Bush NLRB With Assault on Workers’ Rights |
Instead of fulfilling its mission to protect workers and promote collective bargaining, in recent years the Republican majority on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has systematically reduced the freedom of workers to join unions. The abuses have been so egregious that the AFL-CIO today took the unusual step of filing a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO) charging the Bush administration’s NLRB with denying workers’ rights in violation of international labor standards.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says:
Under Bush, America’s labor board has so failed our nation’s workers that we must now turn to the world’s international watchdogs to monitor and intervene. The Bush labor board is kryptonite for America’s workers. There is no historic precedent for such aggressive efforts by the Board to curtail workers’ rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining.
The complaint highlights numerous NLRB cases over the course of several years, including a particularly egregious set of decisions issued by the NLRB in late September. Many of the 61 decisions issued last month continue the erosion of workers’ rights begun in earlier years by the board.
In case after case, the Bush NLRB has denied workers’ rights while protecting employers. For example, in a partisan vote, the board ruled Sept. 29 that if employers voluntarily recognize a union based on union authorization cards (also known as majority sign-up), anti-union employees have 45 days to petition for a decertification election, and the employer must notify employees of this 45-day window.
Although recognition by majority sign-up requires more than 50 percent of workers to choose union representation, only 30 percent of the employees need to sign the petition for a decertification election. In a ringing dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh said the decision “cuts voluntary recognition off at the knees.” Click here to read the NLRB decision.
The ILO complaint, filed with the organization’s Committee on Freedom of Association, says the NLRB responded to a “rise in unlawful employer conduct” by shrinking coverage of the National Labor Relations Act, limiting the rights protected by the statute and strengthening management’s ability to discriminate, harass and intimidate workers. It also charges the NLRB with steadfastly refusing to apply the few meaningful remedies available under the law.
The AFL-CIO has two previous complaints before the ILO, an agency of the United Nations. The complaints challenge the NLRB’s denial of collective bargaining rights to workers now classified as supervisors and to university teaching and research assistants.
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It’s frightening to realize that so many of our Constitutional rights, and hard-fought-for Labor rights have been trampled on so terribly by this anti-union administration that the ‘used to be’ democracy of the USA has to resort to yelling for help from the International Labor community.
Not only has the NLRB failed labor and workers rights; but they have fought weakly in appeals courts to keep favorable-to-labor decisions from being overturned by anti-worker circuit judicial panels.
Some anti-union judges; appointed by Reagan, have systematically ripped workers rights from their collective mouth, by re-interpreting “Jefferson Standard” as it was never intended.
We have an enormous job in front of us, as labor organizers; because the tools that we have earned to use are being taken away. That makes it all the harder to build a democratic labor movement.
Fight on AFL-CIO, Fight On!
The working men and women have the opportunity to take the first step in changing these wrongs by going to the voting booth come election time.
STAND UP, FIGHT BACK
It does not surprise me that a tyrant like George Bush would violate the NLRA. He has no respect for the Constitution of the United States so why would he respect the laws derived from it. I hope that we can turn it around and change our Country for the better in the next election. GO UNION!!!!!!!!!! Kick Bush and his arrogant friends out. Wake up my Brothers and Sisters and vote for your jobs and livelyhood before you vote for the issues that the Republicans claim they fight for but have not changed even though they had been in control of the government for 6 years.
Dear Madame or Sir: It seems like the Bush Administration has little regard for the American worker and is for big business and big government. He wants to silence the workers and not give them a fair deal. This is totally unfair and should be stopped. Thank you. David O’Malley
Now Now people we all know that it’s not about work and wages, it’s about capital and dvidends. If all us service sector folk would just buy stock with all tose tax refunds it would all be good. But NO some of us keep working for money. Didn’t you hear it’s ownership time.