"The Word" of the Day - Solidarity

Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central dedicated his "The Word" segment to a satirical look at the National Labor Relations Board's pending Kentucky River decisions. At risk in these decisions are the rights of 8 million workers to form unions. Employers in the case are seeking to change and expand the definition of "supervisor." Federal law bars supervisors from organizing unions. You can see the whole piece on Comedy Central's website or on YouTube.

You Can’t Judge an Employee by His Tattoos

The New York Times’ “The Ethicist” column recently ran a letter from an employer seeking advice on how to deal with a hard-working employee’s visible and shocking tattoos. The employer could have just told the employee to cover-up, but when he heard the employee’s story he did something that puts a more caring and generous twist on employer-employee relations. Check out the column to get the whole story.

Recommended Summer Reading

Yesterday, Congressman George Miller, the senior Democratic member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, released a report entitled “President Bush’s National Labor Relations Board Rolls Back Labor Protections.” The report details the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) recent decisions that have served to undo decades' worth of hard-earned protections for workers’ organizing rights. It also happened to be released on the same day that 1500 union supporters, organized by the AFL-CIO, protested in front of the NLRB’s headquarters here in DC.

Be warned that if you in any way support labor and working Americans, the information in the report is incensing. The report goes into detail on a myriad of issues and shows a very disturbing pattern of anti-labor ideology in the NLRB’s decisions. Some of the highlights include:

• The Board has succeeded in shrinking the number of workers who receive organizing protections from the National Labor Relations Act. In a series of cases, it effectively denied organizing rights to 45,000 disabled workers; revoked 51,000 teaching and research assistants’ right to organize; and severely limited the organizing rights of 2 million temporary workers. Several pending cases, collectively known as “Kentucky River,” threaten the organizing rights of 8 million workers with minimal supervising authority.
• Federal labor law allows management and supervisors to campaign against unions, so long as their activities aren’t threatening, forceful, or consist of promising benefits. The NLRB has exhibited its anti-union slant by having a double-standard for supervisor speech, finding that supervisors who advocate for unions are inherently more coercive than those that oppose unions. For example, the Board has thrown out union election results where a supervisor urged employees to sign union cards, but thought it perfectly acceptable when a supervisor surveilled his employees in the lunchroom, eavesdropped on conversations, and interfered with off-duty employees campaigning for the union.
• In another ruling, the NLRB said that an employer can create rules that prevent workers from fraternizing outside of work. So, not only can co-workers be prevented from grabbing an after-work drink, but enforcing such rules can essentially prevent any efforts to unionize because organizing often starts when co-workers get together on their own time and discuss their workplace frustrations.
• Another decision denied Weingarten rights to non-union workers. These rights allow workers to have a co-worker present during disciplinary proceedings. The Board even went so far as to find it acceptable for an employer to fire a worker who asked a fellow employee to testify before a state agency in support of her charges of sexual harassment.

The above is just a small summary of the information in the report. The full report is definitely worth the read - if you can stand how infuriated it will make you!