NLRB Hearing on Proposed Rules Change: Employers Game the System
Amid a cacophony of complaints by management lawyers, Scott Pedigo’s voice broke through the rhetoric and laid out for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) what it’s really like to try and form a union in today’s economic environment.
Pedigo, president of Utility Workers Local 304 in West Virginia, was the only rank-and-file worker to appear this morning before the NLRB’s two-day hearing on proposed changes in the way union representation elections are conducted. He supports the NLRB rules changes, which help eliminate delaying tactics for workers who have filed a petition to vote on whether to form a union. Right now, he said, employers have ample opporunity to intimidate and browbeat workers who favor a union.
Pedigo and several academic speakers rebutted the often-repeated management complaints that cleaning up the election procedures would not give employers time to exercise their free speech right to argue against voting for a union. Based on his experience, Pedigo said:
Unemployed Can’t Get Jobs Because They Are…Unemployed
As if finding a job isn’t hard enough, unemployed workers now face the added hurdle of being discriminated against because they don’t have a job. Speaking today before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), said that practices barring the unemployed from job availabilities have been growing around the country—and place a disproportionate burden on older workers, African Americans and other workers facing high levels of long-term unemployment.
“There is a disturbing and growing trend among employers and staffing firms to refuse to even consider the unemployed for available job openings, regardless of their qualifications,” said Owens.
Excluding unemployed workers from employment opportunities is unfair to workers, bad for the economy and potentially violates basic civil rights protections because of the disparate impact on older workers, workers of color, women and others. At a time when we should be doing whatever we can to open up job opportunities, it is profoundly disturbing to see deliberate exclusion of the jobless from work opportunities.
Inequality Could Keep Economy from Full Recovery
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The federal stimulus package is a good way to jump-start our economy, but it is not enough to solve the deep crisis of inequality that has been building in this country for decades. A recent article says the government needs to act quickly to start addressing the growing income gap.
In an article in The Nation online, Christine Owens and Annette Bernhardt, executive director and policy co-director, respectively, of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), say working families were struggling to survive even before the current recession. Although U.S. workers are more productive than ever, they are faced with stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and little job security. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that eight of the top 10 occupations projected to generate the most jobs by 2016 are low-wage jobs in the service sector.
Economic Recovery Package: Jobs, Jobs and More Jobs
Now that President Obama’s economic recovery package has been enacted, workers and political leaders are poring over the details of the plan to figure out the potential impact on workers and their unions.
Jeff Rickert, director of the AFL-CIO’s Center for Green Jobs, says the package will create millions of new jobs and open up opportunities for workers to gain long-term, quality jobs in areas of the economy where unions are strong—manufacturing, construction and others.
Case in point: Nearly $7 billion will be spent in Illinois alone on projects ranging from $1.6 billion for transportation infrastructure, nearly $1 billion for highways and $154 million in job training.
