Lawyers for the National Labor Relations Board, the very people who make decisions that affect the way Corporate America does business, are considering filing an unfair labor practices grievance with the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
If Alice in Wonderland is listening, I hope she is not confused by this.
The grievance of the lawyers is about how the agency has handled benefits that were negotiated in their last union contract.
In particular, the lawyers are upset about cutbacks in assignments, awards, and short-term positions. In addition, some of the choice locations for assignments, such as San Francisco and New York, have been eliminated. All the cut backs are due to budget restraints. The budget of the NLRB was frozen this year, and it will be frozen next year.
If this trend continues, the NLRB might be a shadow of its former self, which would not be a bad thing for Corporate America.
Four nurses at St. Mercy Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. Their complaint, filed in Cleveland, alleges violations by the United Auto Workers regarding union dues.
The NLRB is now investigating the complaint, which may be sent to an administrative law judge.
More than 2,500 nurses and other staff at the hospital are members of the UAW.
This is another example of the rising level of worker dissatisfaction with union representation and the use of union dues for purposes that do not meet with the approval of union members.
The city of Oakland had passed an ordinance that forced franchisees that provide “significant ongoing revenue” to agree to the unionization of its employees via card checks rather than through secret ballot elections. A target of the ordinance was Comcast.
Now The National Labor Relations Board has demanded that Oakland provide a detailed explanation of how the card-check ordinance, which Comcast opposed, benefits the public interest while not abrogating the authority of the NLRB.
The NLRB rightly believes that the ordinance makes the rights of the NLRB, as well as Corporate America, superfluous.
While the NLRB has asked for justification of the ordinance, the only justification is obvious: to help unions organize ever larger pools of workers without having to hold secret-ballot elections, which might not support union representation. Wherever card checks are permitted, workers are frequently coerced into supporting union representation.
Comcast has filed an important suit against the City of Oakland. All of Corporate America is awaiting the outcome.
Workers at Verizon’s Information Services unit (which publishes its Yellow Pages) in Charleston, West Virginia, are part of a growing trend to decertify unions. The workers decided that they no longer wanted to be members of the Communications Workers of America Local 2001, which had represented them since February 2003.
Twenty-eight workers had been eligible to vote, and twenty-five did so. Only six voted to keep the union. Like many workers throughout the US, they felt they could do as well or better on their own. And no one would be deducting union dues. The union had represented both part time and full time employees.
The workers will now have to go it on their own for a year, because NLRB rules do not permit more than one union representation election in a twelve-month period.
This is another example that the promises that unions make, such as increased wages, guaranteed pensions, and job security, no longer ring true with workers.
When unions show contempt for the public welfare as the transit workers did during their recent strike in New York City, they deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. In New York, it’s The Taylor Law, which prohibits strikes by public employees.
Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers’ union, led the transit workers strike in New York City. The actions of his union nearly crippled the city, causing economic hardships to numerous of the city’s businesses, especially those that depended on Christmas shopping.
Now, Mr. Toussaint has been sentenced to 10 days in jail. Many New Yorkers would have preferred that Mr. Toussaint receive a much longer jail term. Some would have been happy had the key to his cell been tossed into one of subway tunnels where Mr. Toussaint’s trains did not run for days. Mr. Toussaint was also fined $1,000, which hardly seems adequate considering all the revenue New York and its merchants failed to earn during the strike.
In pronouncing his sentence, Justice Jones stated: “I am confounded by the tortured tale of these negotiations. It is unfortunate that it came down to an illegal strike, but it was nonetheless illegal.”
One can only hope that this will be a lesson that other public service unions will heed. Private sector unions meanwhile have embarked upon the road of militancy and are planning many new organizing efforts. If Corporate America proves to be pro-active, enacts strategic labor relations plans, and implements those plans, it will help to stop the march of militancy in its tracks.
Card checks represent a threat to the viability of Corporate America, and that threat has manifested itself at the University of Miami.
Some employees want a union, but others do not. The union, SEIU, had failed to file a petition to have the NLRB conduct a secret ballot election for university workers, which - of course - is a regulation to determine if a majority of workers want a union to represent them.
The reason the SEIU did not file a petition is because it wanted to represent all of the workers through the procedure known as “card checks.” Card checks invite union coercion and even threats, while in some cases signed cards can have forged signatures.
This is another instance of a union wanting to overwhelm anti-union workers. If card checks are permitted to replace secret ballot elections, unions will not only coerce workers into being represented by unions, but they will also hold a gun to the head of Corporate America. It reminds me of the last election held by Saddam Hussein, when he received 99 % of the vote.
The fast-growing global economy is putting pressure on Corporate America to end the age-old adversarial relationship between management and labor. Neither unions nor management can any longer afford the devastating costs of strikes, walkouts, and slow downs. Such actions will only serve to give foreign-based companies a competitive edge. Just imagine what would happen now if either General Motors workers or Delphi workers were to go on strike. It would give a green-light to non-domestic auto companies to drive in and fill the void.
Labor has a responsibility to help management find new ways to create wealth. If labor does not meet the challenge, it will commit a self-destructive economic injury.
And management must learn how to communicate more effectively with labor and to prevent labor relations problems before they arise. It needs an action plan for effective labor relations as much as it requires a business plan.
Both sides must work together to get to “yes.”
There must be joint efforts to increase productivity, decrease absenteeism, and raise profits. If there is no joint agreement, workers will see more and more jobs headed to low-wage, foreign countries; and management will find itself in a competitively disadvantageous position.