A Thousand Workers and Union Leaders March on DC Labor Board, Demand That It "Close for Renovations"
Thursday, November 15, 2007
For immediate release
Contact: Caren Benjamin,
202-637-5018
A
Thousand Workers and Union Leaders March on DC
Labor
Board,
Demand That It "Close for
Renovations"
Workers, Activists Protest
in More Than 20 Cities Nationwide
(Washington, Nov. 15) A thousand workers and
labor leaders marched
to the National Labor Relations Board's
Washington, DC headquarters today in
freezing rain, calling for the NLRB to be
closed for renovation until the Board
is more balanced.
The protestors pointed
to a recent flood of anti-worker decisions
handed down by the NLRB in September
as evidence of the current Board's continuing assault
on workers, and said that the NLRB
has abandoned its original mission to uphold
workers' rights.
Protest
actions are also taking place in
more than 20 sites around the country today,
including in Nashville, St. Louis,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Tampa, Milwaukee,
Phoenix, Denver and Albuquerque. In Nashville, for
instance, protestors
dressed up as chickens for a "fox in the hen
house" themed-event.
"The
Bush Board has steamrolled the rights of
American workers
again and again," United Mine Workers
of America
International President Cecil
Roberts said.
"This agency is
supposed to protect workers'
rights and enforce their freedom to improve
their lives through unions. Instead, we have a board
that has blatantly
promoted a corporate agenda at every
turn.
I
don't know how
they can sleep at night. Unions are this
country's most successful middle-class
support program and it's time for the attack on
America's workers to
end."
In late September, the NLRB issued more than 60 decisions, half of which had been pending for four or more years. Many of these decisions strip working people of fundamental workplace rights.
The
latest set of decisions will make it harder for
workers to form a union through
majority sign up - the only real option workers
have now in the broken system
for forming unions and bargaining
collectively.
Under a new rule, if workers choose a
union through majority sign up,
employers have to post a sign telling them that
30% can petition for an election
to undo the recognition - even though a
majority has chosen union
representation.
On the same day, in the height of hypocrisy, the Board ruled that the same election process is just too burdensome when workers are trying to get rid of their union and that their employer should be able to withdraw recognition from the union on the basis of a signed petition.
"These new rules from the Labor Board undo everything we worked to achieve," said Jonathan Upright, an AT&T retail sales consultant who recently formed a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in Winston-Salem, NC, and whose employer posted such a sign notifying workers of how they can get rid of the new union. "The Labor Board is supposed to protect our freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. This September, they stopped doing that. and it's just not right!"
The decisions also make it harder for workers who are illegally fired to recover back pay. In one case, a company in Florida fired workers for supporting a union. The Board refused them back pay because that would "reward idleness" since they weren't out looking for a job soon enough after they'd been illegally fired.
The protestors
said that the NLRB's recent decisions continue
and magnify trends that started
when a Bush-appointed majority took control of
the NLRB in 2002.
They said these decisions illustrate how
badly broken the nation's labor law system has
become and further spotlight the
need for the Employee Free Choice Act - - labor
law reform legislation supported
by a majority in Congress, but stalled by a
Republican filibuster in the
Senate.
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