NLRB: Give Workers a Fair Chance to Vote
by Clyde Weiss | July 19, 2011
It’s no surprise that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other big business interests oppose a set of proposed federal rules that would streamline the process that allows workers to organize and join a union.
After all, many of the corporations that make up the Chamber’s membership just don’t want their workers joining a union. They’ll do whatever it takes to prevent it, from intimidation to appeals designed to frustrate the will of the workers. That very opposition, however, is what makes these rules necessary.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed the rules in June to bring simple fairness to a system that’s broken been broken for years. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is designed to protect the right of workers to form a union, but the 1935 law – which the NLRB administers – is ineffective. “Without reform, the NLRA no longer serves as a viable mechanism,” writes Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University's Director of Labor Education Research, in a report on employer opposition to organizing.
Anti-union businesses “have mastered tactics to tilt organizing campaigns in their favor,” says a recent Los Angeles Times editorial. “They can devote as much of the workday as they like to lecturing employees – together or even individually – on the evils of unions. They routinely challenge the eligibility of workers to vote – before voting, to put off the election date, or after, to block the results from taking effect.”
“It’s a union-buster’s first principle: time is on your side,” U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said at a July 7 hearing on the proposed NLRB rules. “With delay, you wear down workers with fear and intimidation, show them how futile their efforts are as every move gets tied up in litigation, and force them to give up. This proposal limits that weapon. No more delay for delay’s sake.”
That’s why these rules are necessary. They would make workplace elections more democratic. It would streamline the process through electronic transmissions of petitions, election notices and voter lists; defer litigation over voter eligibility until after election; make NLRB reviews of post-election decisions discretionary; and make other changes that will bring fairness to a system now skewered in favor of the employer.
No more procrastinating. The NLRB, on July 18, began two days of hearings on the rules. If America’s working middle class is ever going to get a fair chance to have a voice in the workplace, then these rules must have a chance to get their own vote before the NLRB. We’ve waited long enough!
