Labor hardly threatens the national economy. Despite justified criticism of some organizations, unions have been credited generally with contributing to the increase in the American standard of living. But it’s a new world.
Today, unionization in the manufacturing sector is down to about 13%. According to the Labor Research Association the current decline in union-represented employees is due partly to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the long recession, about a quarter of which were union. Thirty years ago, perhaps 40% of the construction industry was unionized; by 2004, it was less than 15%.
The biggest effect on union/management relations, or on union presence at all, comes from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and its decisions about unfair labor practices and union representation. Traditionally, the make-up of the board splits in favor of the President’s party. As a result, the NLRB swings between pro-labor and anti-labor decisions (overturning past interpretations requires a majority opinion) depending on the party and integrity of the President.
The five seats on the Board, each having five-year terms, are filled by presidential appointments confirmed by the Senate. The Board’s General Counsel is also a Senate-confirmed appointee.
President Envy-our-Freedoms Bush apparently wants to assist Management even more — not the country, but that Management beleaguered with a microscopic unionization rate. He chose the easy way: stuff the NLRB with recess appointees, and avoid the requisite Senate consent. He did this for members
- Peter C. Schaumber, past president of the Republican National Lawyers Association,
- Peter N. Kirsanow, a Cleveland attorney representing Management
- Dennis P. Walsh, a Democrat with a career at the NLRB, formerly Clinton appointee to the Board;
as well as for - Ronald Meisburg, Republican and former NLRB member, as General Counsel.
The NLRB’s Chair is Republican Robert J. Battista, an experienced management labor lawyer in Detroit. The fifth member is Wilma B. Liebman, a former union attorney, initially a Clinton appointee.
With the recess appointments of Schaumber and Kirsanow, the game was afoot for the Republican majority. Precedent, shmecedent, and why bother the Senate? Finally the NLRB had a full complement and could move on to undo as much as possible of the progressive decisions made during the Clinton era.
This month, a new union election was ordered in Marriott Hartford Downtown Hotel by the three Republicans on the Board, Battista, Schuamber, and Kirsanow. The two Democrats on the Board, Walsh and Liebman, wrote:
Continuing a recent trend, today the Board reaches out to reexamine well-established law which protects workers’ rights to organize. There can be no other purpose to granting review in this case other than to meddle with those rights…. In fact, processing the Employer’s petition would be contrary to Board precedent and clear Congressional intent…
In both three-member and full-board panels, since January of this year, the majority has continued to chip away in favor of Management when overturning a decision. Examples: Randell Warehouse of Arizona, Inc. (about the union’s photographing employees while distributing organizing literature); North Hills Office Services, Inc. (about how the employer countered union organizing by attaching to paychecks a newsletter with a large picture of a rat, accusing the union of telling the “Federal Labor Board” that some employees were undocumented); and State Bar of New Mexico (a state bar association won its hope to remain non-union, even though it is privately controlled, not a political subdivision).
Read more here, in “Workers’ Rights Under Attack by the Bush Administration.” It’s a July 2006 report from the U.S. House of Reps. Committee on Education and the Workforce, George Miller (CA) the ranking minority member.
…the Bush [NLRB] Board has displayed a great deal of tolerance for employer behavior designed to discourage unionization….The outcome of each case…is almost invariably a setback for labor unions and the rights of workers.
Hypocrisy infuses Bushworld: adjudicators who ignore precedent, including the NLRB, are diabolically activist if overturning “conservative” decisions, but not if overturning “liberal” decisions. Gag.
The more this President so shamelessly governs by promoting any labor policy based purely on ideology, and the more he ignores the economic welfare of the entire citizenry, the more carelessly he discards those “freedoms” he boasts about because he has nothing else to say. You don’t have to be an advocate of organized labor to sense when power has driven some people, too many people, over the edge. What a nightmare.
