Thousands of Workers Protest Anti-Worker Labor Board

by Mike Hall, Nov 15, 2007

Workers across the country fought back today against the ongoing assault on their rights by the Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In Washington, D.C., and more than 20 other cities, working men and women marched to and rallied at NLRB offices, saying until a pro-worker labor board is appointed, the agency should be “closed for renovations.”

The Bush NLRB has a history of anti-worker rulings, but the board topped itself in September with a sweeping series of decisions that cut to the core of workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.

In Washington, D.C., more than 1,000 workers rallied at the AFL-CIO headquarters and then marched to the national NLRB office.

Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts charged up the group, proposing a new way to spell “NLRB.” (Click here to watch the video.)

I say take the “L” out, because it’s not labor’s board. It’s Bush’s board. It’s Cheney’s board. It’s the Chamber of Commerce’s board. It’s the Right to Work board. It’s the National Association of Manufacturers’ board. It sure as hell ain’t the labor board.

Marching outside the national NLRB offices, Judy Galat, a member of the Office and Professional Employees, said:

We’re here to show that these recent decisions are totally unacceptable, particularly the ones about voluntary recognition [see below]. You know the NLRB was already useless, or anti-union before that decision….That’s the last straw.

Speaking to the crowd before the march, the Rev. Ron Stief, director of organizing for the group Faith in Public Life, evoked the Thanksgiving holiday. The Pilgrims who fled oppression embodied the basis of their civil and political laws in the one-paragraph Mayflower Compact calling for “just and equal laws,” he said.

Does it look like the president who put this board in power believes in just and equal laws? No!

By denying or delaying back pay, illegally fired workers are due because employers have violated their rights [see below], AFL-CIO Voice@Work Director Fred Azcarate said,

The Bush board has made it cheaper for employers to bust unions.…What we want is fair treatment, not a kangaroo court.

The NLRB’s September rulings that sparked the protests included decisions that:

• Make it harder to form unions through majority sign-up. Because the system for forming unions in this country is broken, more workers are forming unions through majority sign-up. But the NLRB ruled that when workers choose a union through majority sign-up, the employer must notify the workforce that just 30 percent of them can petition for an election—even if bargaining is under way. A dissenting NLRB member called this “cutting voluntary recognition off at the knees.”

•  Make it harder for illegally fired workers to recover back pay. NLRB remedies against employers who break the law are notoriously weak and ineffective. Instead of enforcing the law more effectively, the Bush labor board made it less costly for employers to break the law. In one case, workers who were illegally discriminated against 17 years ago still have not received back pay. In another, workers who picketed after being fired for supporting a union were denied back pay due to concerns of “reward(ing) idleness.”

•  Make it legal for employers to discriminate against union supporters in the hiring process and to refuse to hire a worker who comes to the job intending to try to form a union.

In earlier decisions, the Bush board expanded the definition of “supervisor” in a way that made up to 8 million workers ineligible to join unions and denied graduate assistants and temporary agency workers the freedom to form unions as well.

Jonathan Upright, an AT&T retail sales consultant, told the Washington, D.C., protesters that he and his co-workers in a Winston-Salem, N.C., facility recently formed a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) through majority sign-up. (Click here to watch the video.)

Now there are notices from the labor board posted around our worksite instructing us how to get rid of our union. Our retail centers are the first in the nation to have to post these new legal notices. The labor board never posted a sign telling us we had a right to join a union!

On the sidewalk in front the NLRB headquarters, AFT member Eric Duncan said:

I’m here to show solidarity with everyone else, to push for change and to have the NLRB stand for workers as opposed to standing against workers.

Speaking from the steps of the NLRB offices, Joslyn Williams, president of the Metropolitan Washington Council, gave the board a two-pronged warning: Today’s demonstration isn’t the last time Bush’ s NLRB will hear from workers and their unions, he said, and when a new president takes office after next fall’s election, the Bush NLRB appointees’ days are numbered:

We will be on your back until 2008.

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