Bush at war with the American worker!

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Labor Board's Detractors See a Bias Against Workers

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: January 2, 2005

The rulings of the National Labor Relations Board have poured out one after another in recent months, with many decisions tilting in favor of employers.

The Republican-dominated board has made it more difficult for temporary workers to unionize and for unions to obtain financial information from companies during contract talks. It has ruled that graduate students working as teaching assistants do not have the right to unionize at private universities, and it has given companies greater flexibility to use a powerful antiunion weapon - locking out workers - in labor disputes.

And in a decision that will affect 87 percent of American workers, the board has denied nonunion employees the right to have a co-worker present when managers call them in for investigative or disciplinary meetings.

The party-line decisions have been applauded by the Republican Party's business base, which sees them as bringing balance after rulings that favored labor during the Clinton administration. But some academic experts on labor relations say the recent rulings are so hostile to unions and to collective bargaining that they run counter to the goals of the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law that gave Americans the right to form unions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/national/02labor.html?oref=login&th

Is the Bush administration and the republicans waging war against American labor?

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Unions have every right to stop their work. The disappointing thing is that the companies are not given the right to fire all of the striking workers.

If you don't want to work, we'll get somebody who will. It really is a travesty that that is not allowed to happen.

Laziness is the downfall of the American worker. Unions protect that laziness.

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Two-timer,

Do you have any knowledge of American history?

The very simplistic view you are pushing seems to ignore the very needed role that unions played in finding a good balance between workers and employers.

I will not say that Unions are always a good thing, or that they haven't commited abuses...

But letting employers fire workers at will because workers want to protest abuses is a clear recipe for bad things. Just look at history if you doubt this.

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The unions were necessary back in the old days, but what is destroying the airline industry? What is making the U.S. less competitive in the world economy.

I have a very BIG problem with a worker who assembles batteries making $15 an hour, who has the nerve to ask for a raise. What about the unlucky lad working at McDonalds? They have the same education level, but they have a big difference in pay.

Protest abuses? What abuses are you referring to? Be specific. Are the employers slapping their workers in the head whenever they screw up? Are the bosses groping their secretaries? Educate me.

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The two examples you give are not great... the airline industry is under a lot of pressure from forces other than unions.

It seems that without a pilot's union, for example, some educated and skilled workers could be forced out of the profession. A race to the bottom of pilot pay by airlines could be a bad thing for the public at large. In cases like this unions help companies avoid a war of underpaying important workers.

I think that claiming that unions are making the US less competitive is an awfully big stretch. Many of the countries we are competing with, at least for skilled labor, have business conditions much more favorable to labor than ours. The European company Airbus, for example.

The Japanese companies that were competing favorably against US companies for years had, at least until recently, built in commitments of companies toward workers that represented a stronger sense of security than US companies.

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Re: Bush at war with the American worker!

au1929 wrote:

Is the Bush administration and the republicans waging war against American labor?

I wouldn't put it beneath the Bush administration, but it ain't necessarily so. I see no reason to believe that trade union policies are pro-labor in their consequences. Consequently, I also see no reason why the administration's nibbling away of union power would be anti-labor. Of course, it would seem more consequent of them to simply abolish the National Labor Relations Board, which I don't think serves any useful purpose.

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Where's France's unemployment? Compare theirs to ours? I won't go too hard on Germany, they're still paying for reunification.

Quote:

the airline industry is under a lot of pressure from forces other than unions

Yeah? And what are those forces? Don't give me this generic nonsense that it's management's fault. If revenues are $5 million, labor cost is $3 million, and fuel cost is $3 million, how is that management's fault?

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Bush at war with the American worker!

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