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Battista Jumps NLRB Ship, Joins Union-Busting Firm |
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For the past seven years, Bush administration appointees have carried out a war on workers, pursuing a corporate agenda that favored the wealthy over working people.
Some of the most egregious actions came from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is supposed to protect workers’ freedom to join unions and bargain for a better life. But the Republican-dominated NLRB in recent years took away the rights of millions of workers to be represented by unions, made it harder to form unions through majority sign-up, limited the ability of illegally fired workers to recover back pay and allowed employers to discriminate against union supporters in the hiring process.
Many of the anti-worker NLRB rulings came under the watch of Robert Battista, the board’s former chairman, whom Bush renominated to lead the board for another term. Battista, whose first five-year term expired in December, constantly voted against workers and their unions and in favor of management rights during his tenure. In one of his last acts on the board, Battista and his corporate allies tried once again to squelch workers’ voices by ruling that employers can stop workers from communicating about their union by e-mail.
Battista told a U.S. House-Senate joint hearing in December he doesn’t believe the primary purpose of the National Labor Relations Act is to promote collective bargaining. Now he can put that belief into practice out in the open. He asked Bush to withdraw his nomination as NLRB chairman and joined the notorious union-busting firm Littler Mendelson. John Logan of the London School of Economics and Political Science called Littler Mendelson one of the “nation’s first law firms to conduct aggressive union avoidance campaigns.”
When Battista was nominated in January, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, blasted the move.
It’s unbelievable that President Bush would renominate Mr. Battista to the board, after he led the most anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-union board in its history. America’s hard-working men and women deserve a board that will uphold their rights, not undermine them. With these nominations, the administration has again demonstrated its hostility to fairness and justice in the workplace.
In recent months, our allies on Capitol Hill joined our campaign for a fair NLRB that does its job to protect workers’ freedom to join a union. Last November, workers across the country protested the ongoing assault on worker rights by the Bush-appointed NLRB, saying until a pro-worker labor board is appointed, the agency should be “closed for renovations.”
Now, it seems, workers have successfully stalled, if not derailed, the NLRB’s assault on workers’ rights until a new president can appoint new board members. The current two-member board is putting off controversial decisions until it has a full complement of members.
4 Comments
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I think it is overly optimistic to think workers have derailed the NLRB’s assault on workers’ rights. It would be fair to say that the nationwide protest played a very important role in getting Capital Hill and the NLRB to take notice. We still have lost a lot of ground over the years and time will tell if the damage can ever be repaired.
Worker’s rights are in tatters after the Bush Administration’s assault, but that doesn’t have to be our permanent condition. We have the ability to rebuild—starting with EFCA, and continuing with worker education.
Once working people understand that the laws of our nation are not designed to protect the interests of working class men and women or our families, they can make demands of the legislature for labor laws that have some teeth. Posting a letter, or paying an ancient, meaningless fine, does not stop unscrupulous employers from trampling on workers’ rights.
Union avoidance firms should be ashamed to operate the way they do, but it’s just an offshoot of corporate greed. If some of these mega-corporations had to pay substantial penalties for harming employees or denying them their workplace rights, they might not be able to afford the union busters anymore.
National Labor Relations Board? C’mon, be truthful…it’s the
Non-Labor Rights Board, fighting for the rights of anti-labor, anti-union, anti-worker corporate interests. The NLRB trained him well for the “the notorious union-busting firm Littler Mendelson” and he will use his anti-worker network to do even more damage to workers…but karma says he will return someday as a child worker in China making 24 cents an hour and a daily bowl of rice for 84 hour weeks…….
If you want 4 more years of the McSame NLRB appointees and rulings, then vote for the McSame old thing. If you’re fed up with the McSame old politics as usual, then vote for CHANGE you can trust.
http://www.changetowin.org/connect/2008/05/the_end_of_the_beginning.html