Labor Board's Detractors See a Bias Against Workers

[Rose Siding]

...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.

"These decisions come close to or even match the Reagan board in their intensity and vigor in promoting employer powers," said James A. Gross, a professor at Cornell University who has written several books about the board. "They are pressing the outer limits of what could be a reasonable or legitimate interpretation of the balance between employer prerogatives and worker rights. In my mind, this is fundamentally inconsistent with the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act, which is to encourage the practice and procedures of collective bargaining."
...
"After eight years of a liberal Clinton board and an extremely liberal general counsel, there is of course going to be some turning back toward a conservative agenda," said Randel Johnson, vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the United States Chamber of Commerce. "The board has turned a corner here, but it's not a wholesale reversal of the case law in favor of the business community."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/national/02labor.html?hp&ex=1104642000&en=311a9142aabded45&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[lovuian]

1. Workers rights are going to be opressed by Bush

Its war been declared on the American Worker!!!

Total Stupidity!!!

[Solon]

2. Soon, as the Middle Class disappears...

and our workers are kicked around constantly by Republicans in power, and their business interests. The Public will break, at that point all bets are off, I guarantee it. Even the apathetic majority has a breaking point.

[rodeodance]

3. what next!!

[patdem]

4. Haiti looks so good to repukes they want to replicate it here in the US

without the objections and riots of course! Did I say I hate republicans???

[reprobate]

5. I think that this is good for the US.

It's good for corporations in the short run. After all, corporations must answer to their stockholders, right? So everything that increases profit and dividends increases the CEOs take home benefits.

That's what America is all about, right?

But at the same time it's terribly shortsighted.

There will come a time in the not too distant future when those who really produce the goods and services that the corporation profits from will have had damn will enough.

I think it will start with those who have been pushed beyond their limits. It's called going postal. Irate employee with firearms unloading on the management responsible for their misfortunes. I expect that the first few will set off others with grievances, until we have a full blown class war on our hands. You might even call it the beginnings of the evolution of a revolution.

I believe that there is a very deep resentment of their treatment by the corporations infusing the American working class. Tho I dislike referring to the 'working class' because we are such a diverse nation. I think that this resentment has been entirely missed by the MSM, or perhaps they are ignoring it to help the elite.

In any case, in twenty years I think the corporation as we know it will be extinct, to be replaced by something far more friendly to the employee.

But then I'm an optimistic cynic.

[UpInArms]

7. "going postal" a term coined after Patrick Sherrill

killed 13 co-workers in the Post Office at Edmond, Oklahoma on August 20, 1986:

The worst post office massacre took place on 20 August 1986, at Edmond, Oklahoma.

Patrick ‘Sandy’ Sherill, a forty-four-year-old part-time postal worker attached to the main post office in this suburb of Oklahoma County, had been warned the day before his killing spree that he was facing a dismissal for unsatisfactory work. It was not the first time Sherill had been in trouble, and reports from the postal authorities claimed that he had already been under suspension once in the year since he joined as a postman in 1985.

Sherill was always prepared to tell anybody that with an inclination to listen that he was a Vietnam veteran, which was quite untrue. However, he was a member of the Oklahoma National Guard, and a considerable marksman with their competition team. In this position of trust, Pat Sherill was able to withdraw guns from the ONG arsenal for the purpose of entering shooting competitions, and on 5 April 1986 he borrowed a .45-calibre automatic pistol. On 10 August he borrowed another, identical, weapon and three hundred rounds of ammunition.

On the hot Wednesday morning of 20 August, Patrick Sherill, wearing his regulation postman’s uniform, drove to work as usual, taking with him the two .45s plus his own .22-calibre handgun and the ammunition. He walked towards the post office, stopping just once to shoot dead a fellow-worker who was crossing the car park, before passing through the employees’ entrance into the single storey building. After locking several doors in order to maximise his kill, Sherill began, in the words of the police, ‘shooting people as though they were sitting ducks’. Although FBI marksmen were deployed around the building after an employee escaped and raised the alarm, Sherill refused to speak to the specially trained siege negotiators.

When the police eventually stormed the building they found the bodies of fourteen men and women, and seven other badly wounded victims. Patrick Sherill lay dead where he had put a single bullet through his own head, his arsenal of guns and ammunition beside him.

The "good ole' RayGun years! (NOT!)

[The Judged]

6. The Federal Courts will eradicate the laws the allow unions to exist!

The new and revamped Corporate Supreme Court will do this as soon as the ultra-right nominees find their way into their robes!

If not during the next two years, then the following two, after the Re-uglicans gain a veto-proof majority of the Congress.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. kick