Bush National Labor Relations Board is Most Anti-Worker Labor Board in History

Mother Jones Commentary: A ruling by Bush's NLRB could weaken labor protections for hundreds of thousands of workers.

By Stewart Acuff and Sheldon Friedman

In a series of pending cases known as Kentucky River, the National Labor Relations Board could strip what remains of federal labor law protections from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of workers whose jobs include even minor, incidental or occasional supervisory duties. The pending cases involve charge nurses in a hospital and a nursing home and lead workers in a manufacturing plant, but these workers, though they constitute a large group, could be just the tip of the iceberg.

The consequences of bad labor board rulings in these cases will reverberate far and wide, potentially stripping coverage in every nook and cranny of the workforce and creating innumerable new opportunities for mischief by employers and their hired gun consultants bent on denying workers' their fundamental human right to form a union.
...........For all these reasons and more, we must push back against the Bush labor board's assault on workers' rights. We in labor invite, encourage and urgently need support in this fight from people of good will throughout our country, in every major institution of American life. If you want a better, fairer and more just economy and society, please stand with workers in this important struggle.

Stewart Acuff is Director, AFL-CIO Organizing Department; Sheldon Friedman is Research Coordinator, AFL-CIO Voice@Work Campaign.