Workers, and NLRB, Under Attack

http://www.thenation.com/print/article/166606/workers-and-nlrb-under-attack

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

Workers, and NLRB, Under Attack
| March 5, 2012

Republicans have accomplished what Democrats and unions never could: they’ve made the National Labor Relations Board a household name. The NLRB, which in the Bush era churned out anti-union rulings in obscurity, now stars in stump speeches, Congressional hearings, and TV ads. The day after the Iowa Caucus, Mitt Romney launched a South Carolina TV ad condemning the NLRB as “stacked with union stooges selected by the President.” He lost the state to Newt Gingrich, who promised South Carolinians that he would seek to unilaterally eliminate the agency.

On New Year’s Eve, labor was bracing for the NLRB, which interprets and enforces labor law, to be rendered comatose for 2012. An expiring appointment was set to leave the Board one member short of a quorum, and thus unable to rule on any cases. Senate Republicans had promised to prevent any new appointments. But Obama acted to keep the agency’s lights on, making three new NLRB recess appointments in defiance of Republican claims that the Senate was in session.

With Obama’s re-election uncertain and pro-labor legislation stillborn, the NLRB’s actions this year may represent the last chance for years at improving the legal regime facing workers seeking to extract a measure of justice from the one percent. Obama’s appointees did enough last year – investigating aerospace giant Boeing, modestly reforming union election rules, reversing some Bush precedents – to guarantee the hatred of the anti-union Right. But labor and its advocates will judge the Board on whether it seizes three key opportunities over the coming year.

First, there are workers across America waiting for the NLRB to remedy alleged crimes by their employers. One of these workers is Elvis Alvira, a Long Island technician who says he began organizing a union at T-Mobile after a manager’s favoritism forced him to work an hour away from his house while his wife was at home coping with a high-risk pregnancy. Alvira and the majority of his 15 co-workers filed a petition with the NLRB last May seeking to join the Communications Workers of America.

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