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As of now an agency of our government, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), is effectively shut down, unable to do its job. This is a “nullification” by Republicans, of laws that protect workers and companies, in exchange for campaign help from the 1%. They are simply obstructing, blocking appointments in order to keep the agency from functioning. The President has a responsibility to keep the government operating and must use his power to make recess appointments to get the NLRB up and running.

The NLRB

The mission of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), by law, is “to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy.”

Once again, the reason we have the NLRB is:

“…to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy.”

For readers who missed that, here it is in bold:

“to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy.”

It’s The Law

That’s right, it is the policy of the U.S. government, and the law, to “encourage” unionization because higher wages and benefits helps Americans and our economy overall. By law.

It’s the law. (more…)

What a year it’s been for workers! From Wisconsin to Washington, D.C., on the football field and the factory floor, we’ve seen unprecedented attacks on working families from big corporations and their friends in elected office. But what the folks behind these attacks didn’t anticipate was that their actions would ignite a movement — that the worst moments for workers in 2011 might just be the beginning of a great political awakening for the 99 percent.

The Worst

1. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker strips public employees of their collective bargaining rights — Last spring, anti-worker legislators in Wisconsin rammed through a bill that strips the state’s public employees of their right to collectively bargain. After initially using the state’s fiscal challenges as the rationale for his bill, Gov. Walker publicly admitted that the collective bargaining repeal saved the state absolutely no money. This revelation affirmed that the nationwide attacks on public employees were solely designed to hurt workers and their unions — not balance the budget.
2. SB 5 passes in Ohio — In early March, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed Senate Bill 5 into law. The bill scaled back public employees’ ability to bargain together for better workplace conditions and improved safety, marking a major victory for the corporate-backed lawmakers playing politics at the expense of the 99 percent.
3. Income inequality soars to new heights — In September, the Census Bureau reported that one in six Americans are living in poverty. Meanwhile, CEO pay has continued to skyrocket. The result? Income inequality that puts the United States on par with countries like Cameroon and Uganda. And recent studies show that the rise in inequality here in the U.S. is directly tied to declining union membership.
4. Right-wing attacks on the NLRB endanger workers’ rights — Instead of creating jobs, GOP politicians in Congress spent the year launching more than 50 attacks on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the National Labor Relations Act — the only recourse workers have when their rights to form unions and bargain collectively are violated. These cynical political games have not only threatened employee safeguards, but the unprecedented overreach by lawmakers has jeopardized the fundamental American principle of due process.
5. Amazon workers face sweatshop conditions — This fall, an investigative report revealed that employees at Amazon.com’s Breinigsville, Pa., warehouse had been working on their hands and knees at a frantic pace in temperatures so high that the company kept ambulances parked outside. Amazon has yet to address the core problems at the warehouse, including brutal working speeds and overuse of temporary employees, for whom organizing for better working conditions is extremely difficult.

The Best

1. The 99 percent fights back — With the attacks on workers escalating from Wisconsin to Washington, D.C., everyday Americans decided it was time to fight back. Beginning this fall, the Occupy Wall Street movement has succeeded in shifting the debate — highlighting the income inequality that puts our whole economy at risk and bringing our nation’s focus back to where it belongs: on the 99 percent. (more…)

Union workers at West Hartford’s Colt Firearms plant are scared for their jobs after the company announced they will open a new manufacturing plant in Central Florida. The move can’t help but remind one of this year’s NLRB complaint against Boeing for moving a plant of theirs to South Carolina from Washington as retaliation against their union workforce.

After 175 years in Hartford, Colt’s move to Kissimmee, FL marks the first time that Colt has considered any U.S. operations outside of Connecticut. According to The Hartford Courant, United Auto Workers (UAW) members met on Sunday in Newington where they learned that part of the company’s plan is to freeze jobs at the West Hartford plant and begin cutting them in the New Year. The UAW represents 350 workers at the plant.

In June of 2010, 128 union workers were layed off. Since then, though, all but 26 have been hired back. But the news that the company will begin operations in “Right-to-Work” Florida has bleakened the outlook of the Local 350 members:

“They told us to expect more layoffs after the holidays,” said Mike Holmes, the shop chairman at Colt’s for UAW Local 376. (more…)

The Republican war on unions continues apace. On a near-party-line vote Wednesday, the House passed a bill crafted to thwart a National Labor Relations Board decision, made earlier Wednesday, that would entitle workers to a timely vote on unionization once they’ve petitioned for it. By ruling that employers’ legal challenges can be entertained only after a vote, the board effectively denied employers the ability to hold up a vote for weeks, months or even years. Elections delayed, the NLRB essentially said, are elections denied.

The House legislation, by contrast, stipulated that such legal challenges can go forward before the vote. The bill will almost surely go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but then, it’s just one foray in the Republicans’ battle to extirpate worker-controlled organizations in America.

In the run-up to Wednesday’s NLRB vote, there was considerable doubt as to whether a vote could even be held. The five-seat board is down to three members. Republicans have vowed not to confirm any more of President Obama’s appointees, and the Supreme Court ruled last year that if the board’s membership fell to just two, it would no longer have the power to issue rulings. In recent weeks a number of Republicans have urged the board’s remaining GOP member, Brian Hayes, to resign, stripping the board of its rule-setting ability. After NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce scaled back the proposed reform, Hayes decided to stay on, though he did vote against Pearce’s modified proposal.

Also Wednesday, one ostensible casus belli for the GOP war on the board was removed when Boeing and the Machinists Union agreed on a new contract, under which the company committed to expand production at its unionized Washington-state factories. In return, the union agreed to drop its complaint to the NLRB against Boeing’s new factory in non-union South Carolina. When the NLRB’s general counsel took up the case, Republicans pounced: The board, they said, was threatening to kill jobs. This week, the general counsel indicated that if the machinists dropped the case, so would he. (more…)

Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed some modest rule changes to streamline and modernize the way union elections are conducted. While those rules are still under review, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee today approved a bill that would add months- or years-long delays to union elections.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) says the Republican bill (H.R. 3094) would “encourage employers to spend thousands of dollars on attorneys to file frivolous appeals to gum up the election process.”

The bill’s clear intention is to wear down workers so that they give up fighting for a better deal.

(more…)

Workers deserve a “fair, clear system for protecting their rights and making themselves heard in union elections,” four top Democratic lawmakers said in a letter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) strongly supporting the board’s proposed changes in the way elections to form unions are conducted.

Noting that the current election procedures are “outdated and contain unnecessary delays…that run anywhere from three and a half years to 13 years,” the lawmakers say:

The longer an election is delayed, the more likely it is that workers will face harassment and unlawful retaliation for exercising their rights. In today’s workplace one in five workers who exercise the right to organize is illegally fired. In that environment, workers stop trying to organize, leading to a country where tens of millions of Americans who want a union do not have one.

The four are: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairman of the Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee; Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee; and Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee.

(more…)

A great line in the Disney pirate movie was where Geoffrey Rush (as Captain Barbossa) explained the Code of the Pirates, this way, to Keira Knightley (as Elizabeth Swann), “… the Code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ really, than actual rules.” He was a pirate, after all.

Citizens are expected to obey laws, and we all get nervous when laws are ignored or swept aside, particularly at the insistence of someone who is wealthy or powerful.

We are witnessing a case in point, in the recent investigation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which charges that Boeing threatened and intimidated its unionized workers in Washington State. The intimidation and punishment are well documented. Boeing executives repeatedly threatened to move assembly work for the new 787 airplane from Washington State to South Carolina, pointing to strikes over the years by the Machinists’ union. (more…)

A union attorney this afternoon told a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing on proposed new union election rules that the current rules are actually just fine… “if you were living in 1960s. The board needs to come into the 21st century,” said AFSCME attorney Margaret McCann.

These are commonsense changes to the election process, they inject fairness, provide certainty and update procedures in this technological age.

Click here for a look at this morning’s session and follow the rest of the afternoon session with our live tweets here or on Twitter with the hashtag #nlrb1u (more…)

By Mike Elk
Union Organizer

Imagine if Republicans in Congress threatened to defund the Supreme Court because they didn’t like one of its decisions. Well, that’s almost what’s happening right now, as Republicans in Congress threaten to defund the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a quasi-judicial independent body tasked with prosecuting and enforcing labor law.

The whole controversy started when Boeing decided to not open a planned production line at a union facility in Puget Sound after workers went on strike in 2008. In 2007, Boeing announced it would create a second production line to produce three 787 Dreamliner planes a month in the Puget Sound, in addition to the production that was already occurring in Puget Sound. Then in October 2009, it was announced the company would move the second production line to a nonunion plant in South Carolina. Later, a Boeing official told the Seattle Times that Boeing moved the plant because of the strike and the union presence in Puget Sound.

Last month, NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon ruled that the decision to move production to a nonunion facility after a strike violates the ability to strike and collectively bargain enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act. This ruling stands in precedent with a long history of legal cases showing that threatening to move facilities if workers strike is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act (for more information on this precedent, see this factsheet released by the Board). (more…)

By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

The Steelworkers’ drive for decent wages, working conditions and back pay for 18,000 exploited workers in Los Angeles-area car washes — a drive that produced a federal ruling precisely a year ago — yielded a big victory in court on Aug. 13: The two owners of the most-notorious car wash were sentenced to a year in jail, four years’ probation, ordered to open their records to government probes and will pay tens of thousands of dollars for environmental and safety violations.

The workers celebrated their win with a mass rally on Aug. 17 in front of the facility, the Vermont Hand Wash, reported Chloe Osmer of Steelworkers District 12.  The Steelworkers backed the car wash workers’ 2-1/2-year campaign for union recognition, dignity and respect on the job, and safe working conditions.

In late August 2009, that campaign had produced a sweeping National Labor Relations Board ruling for the workers, which Vermont Wash owners Benny and Nissan Pirian agreed to.  The owners also had to allot more than $52,000 in back pay to four workers they illegally fired for their union activities, and another $8,925 for work time the entire labor force lost when Vermont unplugged its time clock during union picketing

The job safety and health violations were turned over to city and state officials.

After settlement on those charges against the Pirians, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Maria Elena Durazo declared: “Today, carwash owners are on notice this is a new day in Los Angeles.  Abuse of workers will no longer go unchecked.”

The fine for those violations could be up to $1.25 million, radio news reports said.

“The Pirian brothers were held accountable because workers at the Pirian carwashes collectively stood up for their rights and for better conditions on the job. Their efforts to organize for a voice are finally bringing accountability to the carwash industry,” said Henry Huerta, director of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign.

In early 2009, the city attorney charged the Pirian brothers with 172 counts of violating job safety, environmental and state wage and hour laws at their four car wash businesses.  Each brother pleaded no contest to six counts, including conspiracy, grand theft and labor code violations, the city attorney’s office said.

Besides the year in jail, each Pirian received on four years’ probation, and they were ordered to keep detailed payroll and job health and safety records open for inspection by city, state and federal agencies.  The court also banned them from attempting to intimidate worker victims or witnesses.

Most of the car wash workers had to arrive 15 minutes before their shift started,  were forced to stay half an hour after the car wash closed — and weren’t paid for either hunk of time.  They were also discouraged or denied rest breaks, even in extreme heat. Most were paid a flat $35-$40 daily and four were paid only by their tips.

In the NLRB case, the agency issued a broad “cease and desist order,” which it uses “only against the most egregious labor law violators,” USW said.  It called the order “a dramatic victory for workers in an industry afflicted with sweatshop conditions.”

“Justice has been served.  We are proud to join car wash workers and others in the community in standing up to employers who intimidated, harassed and fired their employees for pursuing their legal right to safe working conditions and a voice on the job.  Their struggle for justice is our struggle,” USW President Leo Gerard said then.

The car wash workers and the Steelworkers mobilized an area-wide campaign, the Community-Labor Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) to demand justice for the car wash workers.

Luz Elena Oseguera, a union supporter fired from Vermont Hand Wash, told the crowd at the Aug. 17 rally, “I want to say to all carwasheros that what happened to the owners of this carwash means there is justice for us workers.  We are going to keep fighting until we have a union, because that’s the only way that we are going to have real justice on the job.”

“Carwash workers reported the violations that led to the criminal complaint, and to this conviction.  Owners should take notice that workers can — and will — continue to expose illegal workplace conditions in their fight for a voice at work,” added Huerta.

 

 

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