SEARCH
House-Senate Hearing: Bush NLRB Radically Overhauling Labor Law |
|
The Bush National Labor Relations Board is systematically working to overhaul federal labor law enacted to protect workers’ collective bargaining rights, witnesses told a joint House-Senate hearing yesterday. The board is “divorced” from the law’s values and its goals and is waging an unprecedented war against long-established workers’ rights.
Wilma Liebman, the lone Democrat on the NLRB, said the board has gone far beyond the slight shifts in ideology and policy each administration seeks when a new president appoints NLRB members.
Something different is going on—more ’sea change’ than ’see-saw.’ The current board, it seems to me, is divorced from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), its values, and its goals….Virtually every recent policy choice by the board impedes collective bargaining, creates obstacles to union representation, or favors employer interests.…No wonder that there has been loss of faith in the board.
Before a panel from the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions and the Senate Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee, witnesses said the NLRB’s Republican majority has made it harder for workers to join unions and bargain—while making it less costly for employers to break the law and fire workers who want a union.
As AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt told the lawmakers:
Since its installation in 2002, the Bush administration’s Labor Board has embarked on a systematic and insidious effort to radically overhaul our federal labor law and its regulation of labor relations in the private sector. Its decisions are not merely a pendulum swing or a course correction at times characteristic of changes in political administrations. Rather, they evince a calculated effort to make fundamental changes to our nation’s labor law.
The Bush NLRB’s rulings include a set of sweeping decisions issued in September that put more power in management’s hands and helped bury many workplace freedoms. Last year, the board redefined the term “supervisor” to deny as many 8 million workers the freedom to join unions.
Erin Johansson on the American Rights at Work new “Eye on the NLRB” blog writes that the biggest surprise at yesterday’s hearing was NLRB Chairman Robert Battista acknowledgment that:
He no longer believes that the primary purpose of the National Labor Relations Act is to promote collective bargaining.
While for years I’ve written that this Board is more concerned with management rights than with the rights of workers to have a union contract, I’m surprised Battista publicly articulated that his Board gives less weight to the promotion of collective bargaining than what the NLRA’s drafters originally intended.
After several members of the subcommittees charged that the Bush Labor Board has failed to uphold this original purpose, Battista implied that the Taft-Hartley Amendment of 1947 repealed the primary goal of the NLRA, which had been to promote collective bargaining.
Feliza Ryland was a housekeeper at the Grosvenor Resorts in Orlando, Fla., when she and some of her co-workers were fired after going on strike when contract negotiations stalled. In 2001, before Bush stacked the NLRB with anti-worker members, the NLRB agreed the workers were illegally fired and entitled to back pay.
Later, the Bush NLRB ruled Ryland and other workers were not entitled to full back pay because they did not leave the picket line soon enough. The NLRB said the workers forfeited the right to full back pay because they picketed for several weeks in an attempt to get their jobs back—jobs from which they had been unlawfully terminated—rather than looking for new employment. Giving full back pay would “promote idleness,” the majority said. Ryland testified yesterday:
It has now been more than 11 years since I was unlawfully fired, and I am still waiting to see the back pay, still waiting to see justice Workers who are fired for trying to organize and bargain for a better life have been mistreated for exercising their rights. It should not take so long to get justice.
5 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Great article.
It exposes how our hard won gains can be taken from us if we are not vigliant. IMO, no self respecting Union person should even consider voting for a Republican for the next 50 years or so. Hopefully by then the Republicans will have “evolved”enough to understand the importance of Unions and their positive impact upon Humanity.
Another one to add to the FDA (Faulty Drugs Administration “owned” by big pharma) and the SEC (Stinky Ethics Commission “owned” by corporate America), today’s entry is the NLRB (Non-Labor Rights Board “owned” by anti-labor groups and funded by corporate America). So who really cares about working people who are just trying to hold a job, raise their families and set aside a little money for retirement? American government is for sale to the highest bidder……
It’s a shame that the workers of America have to fight not only greedy ceo’s, but our own elected officials, to try and keep our jobs. Battistas’ interpetation of the NLRA to suit his and Bushs needs is like fighting managements interpetation of a bargining unit contract at work.
We the workers still have the power though. We just have to have the guts to use it. We have to have unity to achieve any goal. Anytime that a contract is voted on, if it is reject by 100%, that sends a powerful message to ceo’s that union members are united and they are not going to settle for anything less than what’s deserved. If you don’t have 100%, that gives management the go ahead to keep on offering less until they scare the membership into voting in a bad contract.
We also still have the power to fight the politicians we elect. We just don’t use it. It’s called the vote. We have the chance this coming election year to change the course of the working men and women. We can’t keep going down the road we are on. At the rate we are going there will be no jobs left in America. The only way to get out of the rut is change. Maybe the change won’t get the results we need, but it will be a start.
What would happen if all the workers in America did a one day work stoppage. Think about it. What a powerful message you could send to Capitol Hill. The American worker has had enough of greedy ceo’s and greedy politicians who are looking out for each other and sticking the screws to the workers. But it would take every worker in America to do it. 100%. That would be the only way to be taken seriously.100%. We can’t be afraid to take a stand.
STAND UP, FIGHT BACK!
SOLIDARITY
To Democratic Socialist and all:
“It exposes how our hard won gains can be taken from us if we are not vigliant. IMO, no self respecting Union person should even consider voting for a Republican for the next 50 years or so. Hopefully by then the Republicans will have “evolved”enough to understand the importance of Unions and their positive impact upon Humanity.”
Comments such as above are really incredibly stupid. The Republicans will always be anti-organized labor. They are incapable of “evolution” as they are the expression of corporate greed incarnate. “positive impact upon Humanity”?
Working people simply DO NOT EXIST as human beings, with essential needs to survive economically. Employed working people are referred to as HUMAN RESOURCES, the paycheck comes from the HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT. Human resources are employed as long as they are PROFITABLE. Everything is done to minimize the cost of HUMAN RESOURCES…by eliminating health care, pensions, overtime, high paying jobs.
Can’t live on that?.. too bad… quit! Going on strike? Fine. We’re off to China! Or we’re outsizing via telecom to Manila! Or we are hiring our new computer engineers with PhDs, from India and China for 1/4 the cost of college grads in us.
Don’t have a clue about what to do?? How are you being a “leader” when you are so clueless! Is your role “psychological counselor” as working people
get destroyed, waving the flag of course, and saying how humane we working people are?? How is the organized labor movement reacting to the mutlple crises we are all facing? “Stay the course” Not even that. The labor “movement” is bankrupt politically, with no vision beyond “being a partner” to corporate capitalism. EVEN AS CORPORATE CAPITALISM IN THE U.S. HAS BEEN ON THE DECLINE IN LABOR INTENSIVE JOBS, AND TRANSFORMED THE WAY CAPITALISTS MAKE MONEY: BY GOING TO WAR FOR PROFIT, BY PRIVATIZING SERVICES CRITICAL TO MAINTAIN SOCIETY, BY CORRUPT SPECULATIVE FINANCIAL PRACTICES, BY OPPOSING SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE, BY DENYING PATIENTS CARE IF IT WOULD USE TOO MUCH OF THEIR PROFITS, ETC.ETC.
Previously I had posted that the labor movement should do two things for labor to survive, grow, etc.
1). Form a new national political movement and party to unite with communitry groups, run candidates for office at all levels of government.
2). Form a new national radio/tv/media network, 24 hous a day information on the conditions of working people today. Provide news, opinion not found in the commercial pro-business media, and start on-air education as to what and WHY the nation is in such dire straits.
BUT I realize, a more essential thing must come first. The labor leadership at every level must either resign for incompetence, or start learning itself what is happening. If you have no idea that steps 1 and 2 are vital, then nothing will be done!
Labor must be opposed to PRIVATIZATION for SOCIALISATION:
Social institutions like SOCIAL SECURITY, PUBLIC HEALTH FOR ALL, AFFORDABLE HOUSING, LIVING WAGE JOBS, POLLUTION FREE ENVIRONMENT, WORK PLACE, PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, RETIREMENT PLANS, CHILD CARE, ETC.ETC.
Working People need all the above and more just to survive. Why don’t working people today make a FREE CHOICE and get these needs filled simply by paying for them all by themselves? BECAUSE WE ARE ALL %$#@& BROKE!
Average working people is not merely broke, but is typically THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN CREDIT CARD DEBT (ONE HALF DUE TO MEDICAL DEBT UNABLE TO PAY WITH NO ADEQUATE HEALTH INSURANCE).
WHY IS THIS??? Today many working people are hitting retirement with little or no retirement, with social services being constantly looted by PRIVATIZING corporate greed that wants to remove everything like tax supported social services out of their pocket?
AFTER WWII until about 1970 this were ok. perhaps ….. but no more. THERE IS NO ECONOMIC FUTURE FOR WORKING PEOPLE WHO ARE UNABLE TO GENERATE PROFIT TO CORPORATIONS. No money… no food … no
shelter…etc.
If you think I am lying, start doing economics research and prove me wrong.
After finding out WHAT is happening, THEN FIND OUT WHY IT IS HAPPENING.
Do not narrow your search to the Business Section of the Newspapers, or TV.
Someone in the research department of the AFL-CIO will clue you in.
Now WHY???
To ultimately understand you must break out of the frame, the box of the pro
Democratic Party “lebor leaders” secure in their jobs.
Go beyong and check out ANTI-CAPITALIST SOCIALIST OPINION, NEWS, VIEWS, people who have realized organized labor is in a no-win death embrace with U.S. Capitalism.
Try reading World Socialist Web Site, http://www.wsws.org
best, daily, free, labor conditions from around the world.
Monthly Review Magazine http://www.monthlyreview.org
MRzine on line: http://www.mrzine.org
International Socialist Review http://www.isreview.org
PRIVATIZATION IS OUT TO DESTROY ALL THE
FYI: jeremy@infowells.com
Why We Need A New Political Party
As both Democratic and Republican parties are now corporate funded, they
both support corporate agendas. Both Obama and Clinton support a
continuation of the war in Iraq, both support corporate “for-profit”
health care agendas. On many issues essential to corporate profit there
has been, for many years, bi-partisan support. We essentially have a
corporate political establishment party with two branches. We need to
establish a new anti-corporate second party.
We must go beyond looking for any one “candidate” or individual who can
be trusted to become elected and then solve all our problems.
Historically, these individuals end up being targets of assassination
and corruption. Non-corporate third parties are typically very small,
financially impoverished, and often committed to an ideology that is
often incomprehensible to most people. We need to hold elected
individuals to account to a people’s platform and agenda. If they do not
fulfill these promises, platforms, and needs of the people, they should
be removed from office as soon as possible.
Now is the time to establish a new political party, a People’s Peace
Party
The People’s Peace Party (PPP) shall be an “umbrella party” that will
unite the millions of people now in opposition to the current corporate
regime and it’s various foreign and domestic policies. Millions are
opposed to the war in Iraq. Millions are of Americans are concerned
about global warming, lack of affordable health care, lack of living
wage jobs, the destruction of public education, etc. The massive shift
in wealth to the benefit of a few is destroying the living standards of
the vast majority of people.
There now exists a “virtual” third party among the tens of millions of
people who are opposed to the on-going destruction of this country and
it’s peoples. We are atomized and left powerless by the existing
political situation. For many years we have joined single issue
campaigns and have marched, protested, written letters, supported
Pacifica Radio KPFK, listened to “Democracy Now!”, and tried to be as
“activist” as personally possible. Despite all these efforts we remain
collectively powerless and the needs of the people for peace go
unfulfilled.
“Divide and conquer” has been used throughout history by ruling elites
to maintain power and control over exploited populations. The existing
corporate regime in the U.S. has constantly tried to destroy any natural
alliances between oppressed peoples. Race, language, nationality, and
class are constantly used to keep the people atomized and politically
powerless. We the people of the United States, forever exploited and
increasingly impoverished by these divisive tactics, understand how this
has worked in the past. We must now seek a new way to unite our forces
and energies to create an ecologically sustainable society that seeks to
end the vast social in-equalities that are destroying us all.
Corporate control of government has meant that corporate agendas to
maximize profit have become federal policy. Or more simply put - the
corporations are looting the federal government. War will continue as
long as war is to make profit for oil companies and the military-
industrial complex. Bush has stated that he would not endorse any
environmental policy that threatens the profit of polluting business. No
serious reconstruction aid for Katrina victims because there is
essentially no profit to corporate business in helping poor people.
Privatization of all social institutions is relentlessly pursued.
The principle of maximizing corporate profit now controls every aspect
of social, economic and cultural life. This control and looting by the
corporations of the government has led to massive federal debt, decline
in the dollar, unending financial corruption, until the U.S. is now on
the brink of economic collapse.
The People’s Peace Party (PPP) Founding Principles
* The PPP affirms the principle that the government of the United States
is a government “of, by, and for the people”. Thus the PPP does not
accept contributions from corporations or their third party individual
representatives.
* The PPP seeks to prohibit corporate money (and thus agendas) in
election campaigns by seeking government funding of elections at all
levels of government, not just the federal level. The PPP seeks to end
the “person hood” of corporations which grants them rights of
citizenship without the responsibilities expected in society.
* The PPP seeks to end war. War will never end as long as war is waged
for profit. Thus we will end the privatization of the federal
government, especially privatization of the military (mercenaries, CIA
outsourcing, etc.).
* The PPP seeks to end the corporate control of mass media. The
corporate profit agendas has totally blocked accessible public
discussion and dialog on the critical issues we are now facing. Public
oversight and democratic local control of the mass media is essential
for democracy to function. The vast potential of television to expand
the cultural and intellectual life of the people has been subordinated
and destroyed by corporate advertising and political agendas. Corporate
advertising and control of mass media must be minimized and eliminated
where possible.
* The PPP will create mass media programs of various types to educate
the people on the PPP agenda, platforms, candidates to be widely
distributed through existing non-profit networks. We would urge everyone
in agreement to become active at what ever level is personally
possible.
* The PPP would implement a program to transition to a peace economy.
The proposal by Dennis Kucinich to establish a Department of Peace
should be implemented. We would withdraw all U.S. troops for the Middle
East. The PPP would reduce the military budget by 50%. Shut down the 700
plus foreign military bases. Shut down costly and failed military
systems. (planes that don’t fly, “star wars” programs that don’t work,
etc.) We would re-instate all tax cuts implemented by the Bush regime
for corporations and wealthy individuals. A vigorous audit of
corporations and wealthy individuals would be undertaken to minimize tax
fraud.
* The PPP works towards a humanistic immigration policy that uses the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it’s guide. We would end all
immigrant concentration camps, ICE raids that has incarcerated thousands
and broken families. We would seek to examine and correct the conditions
that have cause this mass migration into the U.S.
The PPP would end all “free-trade” treaties such as NAFTA, CAFTA that
are destroying the economic life of millions of farmers and workers in
Mexico. We would end subsidies to corporate agriculture that have dumped
cheap corn into Mexico, causing subsistence farmers to leave the land.
The majority of people of Mexico are living in poverty. The PPP would
insist that the Mexican government begin a vigorous program to upgrade
the living standards of it’s citizens. Minimum wages, national health
care, massively increase funding for schools and teacher salaries, etc.
must be undertaken to stem the flow of immigrationNow is the time to
establish a new political party, a People’s Peace Party to this country.
Foreign and domestic corporations operating in Mexico, business and
wealth in Mexico must be taxed in addition to massive foreign aid from
the United States to remedy the massive inequality between the two
countries.
By ending war and militarism, the “peace dividend” that was possible
with the collapse of the Soviet Union would finally become a reality.
The peace dividend would mean that the vast funds for war and
destruction would become available to cope with the many crises humanity
now faces.