Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on Latest NLRB Decision to Undermine Workers
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
For Immediate Release
Contact: Steve Smith
202-637-5018
Statement by AFL-CIO
President John
Sweeney
on Latest NLRB
Decision to Undermine
Workers
October 3, 2007
The Bush National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced this week an outrageous decision that will further strip employees of their free choice to join a union and bargain collectively. At a time when America isn't working the way it should for working people, the Bush labor board is pulling the rug out from under our nation's middle class through such decisions which amount to a sea change in our nation's labor laws.
The
latest ruling by the Bush board--decided on
partisan lines--would effectively
permit a minority of employees to negate the
majority's decision to have a
union, even where the employer has agreed to
recognize the union through
majority sign-up or "card check" process, and
is already engaged in bargaining
with the union for a contract. The
decision means that as few as 30 percent of the
employees will be able to cause
any such recognition to be set aside and force
an NLRB election to try to get
rid of the union.
This
shameful decision reverses decades of precedent
around voluntary recognition - -
what previous Board decisions have called "a
favored element of national labor
policy." The NLRB has shown itself again to be
little more than a political tool
of right-wing Republicans in their continuing
assault on America's working
families.
The fact is the
NLRB process is so severely broken that the
majority of workers in this country
who successfully form a union now do so through
a voluntary recognition
process. In
allowing a small group of
workers to undermine both the majority of
workers' and the employer's wishes,
the labor board is effectively making a mockery
of the law's allowance for
voluntary recognition.
Workers
who attempt to join or form unions through the
NLRB election process are
routinely subjected to harassment, intimidation
and even fired, which is why
momentum continues to build for the Employee
Free Choice Act.
In its decision,
the Board fails to offer a valid explanation
for these drastic changes in labor
law. The two
dissenting members
of the five-member board, Wilma Liebman and
Dennis Walsh, say that this "sea
change in labor law" will "cut
voluntary
recognition off at the
knees."
The case stems from an agreement by Dana Corp. and Metaldyne Corp. with the United Autoworkers not to interfere in workers' efforts to form a union if a majority has signed union authorization cards. After the union was recognized, employees in each unit filed a petition seeking a decertification election. The NLRB regional director dismissed the petitions based on the board's "recognition-bar" doctrine that an employer's voluntary recognition of a union bars an election petition filed by a few employees or a rival union for a reasonable period of time to permit collective bargaining to succeed. The Board's ruling will allow a minority of employees to file a decertification petition despite the express wishes of the majority and even if the parties have succeeded in reaching a collective bargaining agreement.
The
Republican members of the Board have issued a
number of decisions that
negatively impact workers, including last
year's ruling to strip nurses and
other workers with occasional supervisory
duties of their union rights - - and
they are expected to issue a host of negative
decisions in the coming
days.
It's
time for the politicization at the NLRB to
stop. The Board must return to its
original intent of protecting workers' basic
freedoms rather than infringing
upon them.