The Boston Globe, July 12, 2006, Wednesday

Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe

July 12, 2006 Wednesday
THIRD EDITION

SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A9

HEADLINE: PROTECTING WORKERS' RIGHTS

BYLINE: BY JOHN SWEENEY AND RICHARD M. ROGERS

BODY:
VANISHING retirement security. Rising healthcare costs. Gas prices north of $3 a gallon. Workers in every industry are feeling the crunch of an increasingly harsh economy. As if it weren't difficult enough for working families to make ends meet, the Bush administration's National Labor Relations Board is poised to issue a series of decisions that could take away the one avenue to economic security left for many of America's workers: the freedom to form and join unions.
This summer, nurses, construction workers, painters, welders, electricians, and others who have exercised their freedom to have a voice on the job are bracing for an assault on their rights. Rulings by the Bush-appointed board in what are collectively known as the "Kentucky River" cases could strip hundreds of thousands of workers of their union protection, while many more could be blocked from joining unions.
At the heart of the issue in the three cases is an effort to reclassify many workers, such as nurses, as supervisors. Unlike employees, supervisors do not have protected rights under federal law to form and join unions. Employers often try to classify workers that way to deny them their rights to union representation. Any skilled or experienced worker who sometimes directs or assigns the work of those less skilled and experienced is vulnerable under a broader interpretation of what it means to be a supervisor. For example, head or charge nurses, who direct less-experienced nurses and aides, could be deemed supervisors under the new rule.
The implications of losing union protection run deep for workers. For example, if workers lose their protections as employees under federal law, they may be fired or otherwise disciplined for union activity.
These decisions come at a critical time for America's workers. Big business has exploited the nation's weak labor laws, and its allies in Congress and the White House have done nothing to stop it. With the current composition of the Labor Relations Board heavily anti-worker, corporate America has become increasingly aggressive in its tactics to erode workers' rights further.
When faced with organizing drives, a quarter of employers fire pro-union workers, more than half threaten to close a work site if workers succeed in forming a union, and three-quarters hire professional anti-worker firms to help them suppress workers' will using both legal and illegal tactics, according to research by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University.
The Labor Relations Board has been an active partner with big business in denying workers their freedom to form and join unions. As a body composed of presidential appointees, the board reflects the administration's priorities. And given the board's past decisions, those priorities are clear.
In 2004, the board issued a series of decisions that stripped workers of legal protections. In July of that year, the board ruled that graduate teaching and research assistants were not employees, making them ineligible to form a union. In September, the board targeted disabled workers by ruling that if they are receiving rehabilitative services from their employer, they are ineligible to join a union. In November, the board ruled that temp agency employees, though performing the same duties as regular ones, could not organize without both employer and agency permission.
The Bush administration's board, unlike previous ones, has refused to allow oral arguments in its cases. Even the "Kentucky River" cases have not been opened for such arguments, despite the extraordinary importance these decisions hold for the future of America's workers.
Even with ominous storm clouds on the horizon, workers are not about to allow their rights to be trampled without a fight. This week, thousands of nurses and other workers are joining together in Massachusetts and across the nation to stand up for their rights, urging America's leaders to end the workers' rights violations that are helping to erode the nation's once-powerful middle class.
In a democracy, the people have the right to be heard. With working families struggling to keep afloat in an economic climate that's becoming harsher by the day, their union protection is a beacon that helps guide them past rocky coasts. They're not going to sit quietly while the Bush administration engages in an all-out assault on one of the far-too-few protections they have left.

NOTES: John Sweeney is president of the AFL-CIO, and Richard M. Rogers is executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council.