Our Executive Director, Greg Tarpinian, blogged in this space a few days ago about the recent spate of anti-worker decisions that just got coughed up by the National Labor Relations Board. Others around the Web are commenting on this, too.
The American Prospect asks "How have things gotten so bad?"
You might think that the NLRB, the agency responsible for implementing national labor law, would be happy about [the] card check revival. After all, one of the principal aims of America's labor laws is still, believe it or not, to encourage collective bargaining. And workers' right to organize is an international human right, which the United States is obliged to protect by virtue its membership in the [International Labor Organization] --not that such legal niceties matter much to the Bush administration.
But in keeping with the dark Bushian vision of government, the NLRB reversed established law, making it much harder for unions to win recognition through card checks, or "majority sign-up," and undercutting the incentive for employers to agree to that process.
And American Rights at Work explains how the NLRB is victimizing the victim:
Included in the deluge of cases are two that further undermine the law’s already paltry provisions for compensating victims of illegal employer conduct. The Bush-dominated Board has added new hurdles that workers must overcome before they can receive what employers have unlawfully taken away.
Under the current law, there are no penalties, fines, or punitive sanctions for employers who break the law. The only remedy for workers who are illegally fired that employers must “make victims whole” by providing backpay for the period between the firing and until the worker finds a new job. But the Republican majority of the Board decided that workers who experience employer discrimination apparently have it too easy.
