Making Rodney Dangerfield Proud

While there are a multitude of ways big-business sponsored Republicans can do to deny working people the right to organize; for a recent example, see: filibustering of the EFCA.

But what often goes unreported is the real heart of the labor-crushing movement: ideologically anti-labor members of the National Labor Relations Board. That body oversees and decides employer-employee disputes, with an original FDR-era mission of protecting workers from exploitive and unfair employer practices. In much the same way the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is supposed to be the overseer and protector of minority rights from race, religion and economic-driven tyranny, the NLRB is there to make sure the workers' rights are protected.

So it's no surprise that the current administration, just as they did to the Civil Rights, the FCC and SEC, to name a few, the NLRB has been filled with a pro-big business, anti-labor commissioner majority. And the fruits of their labor (ironic, huh?) have provided a feast for employers looking to keep their workers from organizing and, gasp, being paid fair wages and benefits and provided safe and clean working places.

Perhaps the must substantial decision they made was in the Oakwood Healthcare, Inc. case, where they essentially gave a silver bullet to employers all over the country who want to deny their employees unions. Basically, they said that employers, in this specific case hospitals, can classify their workers as "supervisors", as analyzed by the AFL-CIO, if he or she spends as little as 10 percent to 15 percent of his or her time overseeing the work of others. That breaks down to less than an hour a day or one full shift every two weeks.

The consequences of this ruling are vast:

Although two of the three cases involved only nurses, the expanded definition applies to workers in every industry and means up to 8 million workers, including nurses, building trades workers, newspaper and television employees and others, may be classified as supervisors and barred from joining unions. Under federal labor law, supervisors are not protected against retaliation for forming unions...

And the two people on the NLRB that actually believe in workers' rights said this:

In their dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh said the decision:

threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law—workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.

Liebman and Walsh wrote that most professionals and other workers could fall under the new definition of supervisor, “who by 2012 could number almost 34 million, accounting for 23.3 percent of the workforce.” They went on to say the Republican majority did not follow what Congress intended in applying the National Labor Relations Act.

It's instructive to look at the actual clause in the law that the NLRB is insisting blows such a hole in the right for millions of workers to organize:

any individual having the authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.

While that's not completely clear, here's what the NLRB itself said before it handed down its decision:

Both the drafters of the original amendment and Senator Ralph E. Flanders, who proposed adding the term “responsibly to direct” to the definition of supervisor, agreed that the definition sought to distinguish two classes of workers: true supervisors vested with “genuine management prerogatives,” and employees such as “straw bosses, lead men, and set-up men” who are protected by the Act even though they perform “minor supervisory duties.”

So it seems this NLRB stared right in the face of this clear distinction and did what it wanted anyways. Enter the RESPECT Act.

Formally the Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradeworkers Act, it would restore the right to organize to a long list of workers that have some supervisory responsibilities. In the house, it is HR 1644 and was introduced by Reps. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) and Don Young (R-Alaska) and in the Senate, where it is S. 969, it is sponsored by Chris Dodd (D-CT).

It will no doubt pass the House; let's just hope the Senate sticks it to one of those appropriations bills it has coming up so it doesn't suffer the same needless fate as the EFCA.