Still Waiting for Justice Under Bush Labor Board

by Tula Connell, Dec 18, 2007

Wanted to point out some great video clips from the House Education and Labor Committee from last week’s dynamic House and Senate hearing on the Bush National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and its routinely anti-worker rulings.

The clips include testimony from one of the two Democrats on the Bush NLRB, Wilma Liebman (bottom), who decried the ideological extremism of the Bush board, noting:

Virtually every recent policy choice by the board impedes collective bargaining, creates obstacles to union representation, or favors employer interests.

There’s also great testimony from Feliza Ryland (top), a housekeeper at a Florida hotel who was 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 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.

As Ryland testified:

Workers who are fired for trying to organize and bargain for a better life have been mistreated for exercising their right. It should not take so long to get justice.

I’m still waiting to see the justice.

Check out all the clips here.

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