Building Trades News

An "oxymoron" is defined as a figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas or terms are combined. With the United States’ Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board the words "workers’ rights" has become an oxymoron. Especially noted are the new regulations and decisions that have been coming from the U.S. Secretary of Labor and National Labor Relations Board members who have been appointed by President Bush. The Labor Department’s Secretary Elaine Chao was appointed by President Bush to harass Labor Unions rather than to administer Labor Law and protect the rights of working people in the United States.

It has been a disgrace that the only new regulations of "dubious" importance that have been pursued by this administration, have been to require more detailed reports of Union representatives’ expenditures, requiring weeks of preparation and increased costs for accountants’ reports, and the push to undermine legitimate and proven Apprenticeship Training Programs with the just issued proposals for relaxation of requirements for apprentice time-based educational and on-the-job training. Along with the Secretary of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board has been so obvious in its bias against Unions and workers that Congress has held hearings investigating reports about the NLRB’s anti-Labor decisions.

The Chair of the Board, Robert Battista, was called to the hearings to testify and was open about the NLRB’s new direction in ensuring "employee free choice" rather than promoting collective bargaining as the National Labor Relations Act declares. Battista’s position, that the Act doesn’t make it a priority for employees to have Unions, is opposite of what the Act says, even with the amendments to the original Act that where brought about by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, and his own testimony, that the National Labor Relations Board has a responsibility to encourage collective bargaining. Without a Union, employees don’t have a way to bargain collectively. We know that Bush has appointed a majority of pro-business/ anti-Union NLRB members and they continue to brag about their having handled a large number of cases as proof of their fulfilling their charge as Board members.

However, the decisions that the Board has been making have invariably been against the employees. Battista even brags about having met their goals of deciding the hundreds of backlogged cases that had been building for over 30 years. This was quite an effort, however, since the decisions where overwhelmingly against employees it turned out to be one that workers could have done without. He goes further in describing, as another example of their fairness, the statistic that Unions have won 54.3% of the Representation Elections that were conducted by the Board. This figure was of the 1,559 elections that were held, but, there were actually 2,439 petitions that were filed by workers for elections. So if you take 2,439 as the number only 34.7% were won by the workers and their Union.

The real story is in the number of violations that companies had committed during the attempts of workers to have a Union and how the Board has allowed any corrective action in those cases to languish for years. These kinds of delays have completely and generally undermined employees confidence that they would ever have a legitimate and timely right to select a Union or not. Their confidence in the National Labor Relations Board has eroded so much, that in the last 10 years, cases brought to the NLRB have dropped by 46% and 26% of them have been in the last two years. Their decisions in the cases that they have heard have been bad for workers no matter if they have a Union or not. Just in the last 6 months the Bush NLRB introduced new rules that require, after an employees’ Union gains voluntary recognition from a company, the Union to post a notice informing the employees of the recognition and that they can get rid of the Union within the next 45 days if they can get thirty percent of the employees to sign a petition for a decertification election to be held by the NLRB.

 Now, you have to remember that the Union supporters had to get 50% of the employees to sign representation cards to gain voluntary recognition. This is the reverse of majority rule with 30% able to counter the efforts of the majority to gain a Union. Obviously, this sets in motion a long process that allows for not only the vote but as well, challenges and court actions that can hold up any bargaining for years. The NLRB was not happy that workers found a way around their inaction and anti-Union decisions. The House of Representatives Education & Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D - California) exposed what has been happening in his statement at the Committee Hearings on "The NLRB: Recent Decisions and their Impact on Workers’ Rights", when he said: "Workers’ rights have been under nearconstant assault in the years since the start of the Bush administration. We see it in the Supreme Court led by Bush appointees who have handed down decisions that make it harder for workers to get justice when the are the victims of workplace discrimination.

 We see it in a highly politicized Labor Department that acts like an arm of the far right, each day looking for new ways to undermine workers’ rights and workers’ organizations. And we see it in the anti-worker agenda of the NLRB. Over the last several years, brick by brick, the NLRB has worked to dismantle the foundation of workers’ rights in this country – the right to organize." And some people say the reason that Unions are on the decline is because workers don’t want Unions. This is absolutely the reverse of the facts. It has been the overwhelming weight of the Federal Government and the Courts and their big business allies that has caused the decline of Unionization. In November of this year American workers have an opportunity to elect a President who will appoint Labor Department leaders that will once again apply the real meaning and intent of the phrase "Workers’ Rights" in the work place.