NLRB Decision to Undermine Workers
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.
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