If anyone questioned how committed some legislators are to weakening unions and workers’ ability to challenge employers that violate their rights, one only has to look at a recent showdown in the Senate.
Some Republican Senators had been blocking votes on several Presidential appointees to the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and other agencies.
But when push came to shove, the fight was really over the Labor Board nominees, and it wasn’t until Senate Democrats planned to change long standing Senate rules that a deal to fill the NLRB seats was reached.
Why such a big deal over the National Labor Relations Board? Because it’s one of the last checks on the power of corporations, and the main arbiter of disputes between unions and employers. If big corporations and their defenders in Congress can render the NLRB inoperative, the uneven playing field that is labor relations in our country would become almost entirely one-sided.
If you doubt the motive, talk to Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who at the beginning of the controversy said that making the NLRB “inoperable is progress”.
So what does the NLRB do exactly? The NLRB oversees the process most workers use to form a union, and protects workers’ right to band together to improve their lives. It was formed in 1935 after the National Labor Rights Act was passed to enforce the law and provide a structured process for resolving disputes.
But over the years, employers – with the help of conservative courts – have managed to weaken workers rights. Employers have figure out ways to crush union organizing campaigns while staying within the letter of the law. Moreover, the penalties for violating workers’ rights are so weak that some employers even go so far as to fire or discipline workers who are trying to form a union, and get little more than a slap on the wrist.
Right here close to home we saw a recent example of this when the Region 6 office of the National Labor Relations Board settled allegations that UPMC committed 80 separate violations of labor law – including firing two workers. UPMC put the fired workers back to work and reimburse back pay, but no further fine or penalty was imposed.
Filling the NLRB appointments so that the Board can continue to operate is good news for workers, but we have a ways to go before there’s a level playing field that lets workers freely organize and we can rebuild the middle class.