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Marchers to Say NLRB Should Be ‘Closed for Renovations’ |
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The sweeping anti-worker decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that are driving people into the streets tomorrow stack the deck in favor of employers at the expense of working men and women.
In more than 20 cities across the country—from Washington, D.C., to Anchorage, Alaska—thousands of workers will march and rally at NLRB offices tomorrow to protest the board’s attacks on worker rights and to push for an end to the Bush administration’s NLRB—the most anti-worker labor board in decades. (For more information on events in your area, contact your local central labor council.)
Ask Jonathan Upright about it. When he and his co-workers at the AT&T retail customer center in Winston-Salem, N.C., faced a severe cut in pay and benefits last March, they decided to fight back and join a union.
Because the Communications Workers of America (CWA) has a neutrality agreement with AT&T, the workers were able to join the union within a few months. Under the agreement, managers will not interfere with workers who are trying to form a union and will recognize the union if a majority of workers signs authorization cards.
But a September ruling by the Bush NLRB could deprive Upright and a majority of his co-workers of their choice. The ruling, among a river of anti-worker decisions the board issued last month, requires employers to notify the workforce that just 30 percent of them can petition for an election to undo the majority-supported recognition—even if bargaining already has begun.
In a ringing dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh said the decision “cuts voluntary recognition off at the knees.”
Upright says:
It doesn’t make any sense that a small group of people could undo what the majority of us want. The difference between union and nonunion at this center is black and white. We could go back to making less money and getting fewer benefits, but I don’t know why anybody would want to.
The consistent theme in the Bush NLRB decisions is undermining workers’ rights and protecting employers.
For example, in another decision in September, the board ruled that when workers seek an election to oust a union, the employer should not have to wait for the vote to withdraw union recognition—because it takes too long to hold an election.
Ironically, workers who want to form unions have been saying for years that NLRB elections take too long; that’s one main reason more workers are using majority sign-up to form their unions. It’s also one of the key arguments in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers the choice of how to choose a union.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says:
The function of the Labor Board is protecting workers’ rights and ensuring their freedom to form unions and bargain collectively for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Like so much else in the Bush administration, this Labor Board has become nothing more than a shill for corporate special interests, and it’s time for it to be closed for renovation.
The board’s actions have become so egregious that the AFL-CIO last month took the unusual step of filing a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO), charging the NLRB with denying workers’ rights in violation of international labor standards.
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I had an unusual NLRB supervised election in that very NLRB HQ building a couple of years ago when I was an organizer.
The company pulled out all thre stops, including sending foremen, supervisors, the union buster and the owner into the NLRB building itself to threaten workers as they were standing in line to work — literally under the NLRB’s noses.
When I spoke to the NLRB agents at the building and asked that the company reps get thrown out, they told me they were powerless to do anything — which pretty much sums it all right there. Even in their own building they couldn’t stop the blatant workers rights violations right under their own noses.
Thankfully, we won that election.
You have to remember that we are in the midst of a redux of the late 19th and early 20th century attempt to prevent unionization. If we succede in rebuilding the labor movement we rebuild the middle class. If people are able to look beyond the next paycheck from their two or three jobs they are less likely to be afraid. If they can act from knowledge the far right will find their seeds of fear of everyone and everything won’t take root. Our opposition will use every tool they can think of, take the state of Washington for example: The Governor is a former state employee, yet she feels it is wrong that those of us who have chosen to be in a union should b e able to negotiate for anything better then the unrepresented or managment workers. To date the only real edge we’ve kept is that our
cola’s start three months earlier.
We working people will have to do what our great grand parents did: sit-ins and take-overs to get union recognition. The NLRB was created at a time when sit-in and take overs had such a powerful effect that the bosses created the NLRB to send the struggle into the court room and out of the streets. Why? because the struggle in the streets was more powerful and took control out of the hands of the corporations and put it in the hands of the working people. Reseach and read labor history–it’s all there. My book “Making Changes” also talks about how to do union organizing–see what it’s like, based on my experiences. Go to http://www.hilliardbooks.net Thanks. Let’s begin Making Changes—we need it.