Boston Globe, September 6, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe

September 6, 2004, Monday THIRD EDITION

SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A7


HEADLINE: WORRIES ABOUT NLRB FUEL CAMPAIGN BY UNIONS
LEADERS SAY PANEL FAVORS EMPLOYERS, SEEK TO OUST BUSH

BYLINE: By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff

BODY:
The AFL-CIO's $45 million effort to unseat President Bush is driven by an issue that unions care passionately about, but many voters have never heard of: the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board.
Labor leaders say that in recent months the current board has made hard-hitting decisions that favor employers. And a Bush appointment last December increased to three the number of Republicans on the five-member NLRB, a change unions say could profoundly hurt organized workers for years. Since then, two major board decisions, on graduate students and nonunion workers' rights, have been the focus of criticism from labor organizers.

"The question of presidential appointments to the National Labor Relations Board is as important to labor as abortion rights are to women and civil rights are to minorities," said sociologist Robert J. S. Ross, director of International Studies Stream at Clark University in Worcester.
Their concern is prompting a massive get-out-the-vote campaign in a tight presidential race that is entering its final post-Labor Day phase. In addition to the AFL-CIO's push, the 1.5-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is earmarking $48 million to urge union members to vote Democrat, particularly since more than 30 percent of union households vote Republican. The Service Employees International Union is putting $65 million into a similar effort.
So far, 35,000 volunteers backed by the AFL-CIO have knocked on doors, passed out 1.5 million get-out-the-vote fliers, and made 5 million telephone calls to the nation's union households to rally members.
The NLRB chairman, Robert J. Battista, a Bush appointee, bristled at union contentions of probusiness bias.
"This type of election-year hyperbole unfairly undermines public confidence in the nation's basic labor law and its institutions that have worked so well since 1935," Battista said in a statement. The cases "were correctly decided, soundly reasoned, and speak for themselves," he said. The board, established under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, supervises union elections and remedies unfair labor practices at work.
But labor leaders say these recent NLRB decisions came after Bush appointed Ronald E. Meisburg to the board in December, a move that tipped the board to a GOP majority. Meisburg's appointment expires when Congress recesses in November, but unions fear he will become permanent if Bush is reelected.
That could change if Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry of Massachusetts wins the election.
"Unions are very concerned," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. She said unions fear corporations will be emboldened to work with the administration to dismantle labor rights if Kerry loses and the board is still controlled by Republicans.
"This election is critical for unions and for worker rights in general," she said.
Already upset over the Bush administration's decision to eliminate overtime for some workers, unions became alarmed when the NLRB announced in June that it would hear a case challenging the use of "card check recognition." The organizing technique lets unions form bargaining units at workplaces after a majority of workers sign union cards. The employer must agree to recognize the cards and unit.
Card check recognition has been around for some time, but unions have relied on it more in recent years because of increased employer hostility to organizing in the workplace, said Bronfenbrenner.
Card checks have become a formidable organizing tool in the labor movement's arsenal, especially today when just 12.5 percent of the US workforce is unionized, down from 35 percent in 1945. In Las Vegas, for example, thousands of hotel and casino workers have been organized over the past five years using the tactic.
Although union members tend to back Democrats, labor organizers are especially pleased with Kerry because he came out in favor of a bill that would prevent employers from prohibiting card checks in the workplace.
The bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, is sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and would allow a new union to be certified after the board finds that a majority of workers have signed union cards.
"Kerry is strongly in favor of card check," said Steve Elmendorf, Kerry's deputy campaign manager. "He has made no bones about supporting it."
Republicans maintain that without secret-ballot elections, workers could be forced into joining a union. The US Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million businesses, agrees.
"There is no question that these so-called card checks are subject to coercion and sometimes, frankly, workers don't even know what they are signing," said Randy Johnson, vice president of labor, immigration, and employee benefits at the chamber in Washington, D.C.
He said unions want to eliminate union elections because "their numbers are dwindling, and they are trying to figure out how to reverse that trend."
Card checks are not the labor movement's only concern.
In July, the NLRB ruled that graduate students at private colleges and universities are not workers. That means they no longer have the right to form unions like other workers. The decision reversed an earlier 2000 finding that opened the door to unionization for the students.
In a separate June decision, the NLRB barred nonunion workers from bringing a union representative to meetings where the workers could be disciplined. That ruling overturned a four-year-old NLRB finding.
Labor unions argue that such workers should have representation when the outcome of a meeting with the boss could affect their livelihood.

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.