The AFL-CIO, which comprises about 50 labor unions and approximately 9-million members, has filed a protest with the International Labor Organization of the United Nations.
The AFL-CIO gripes that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) should not have defined the role of supervisors in what is known as the Kentucky River cases, when the Board ruled that nurses who head shifts at health care facilities should be considered supervisors, and thus not be eligible to join unions.
Since NLRB rulings cannot be appealed in the U. S. Courts, the AFL-CIO has gone to an international body, hoping to embarrass the Board into changing its collective mind. The result, in fact, will be that the AFL-CIO will be embarrassed. Foreign bodies, such as the labor committee at the U.N. have no standing with US voters and legislators. Indeed, the United Nations is held in fairly low esteem by a broad cross section of Americans.
The labor movement has fallen to new levels of desperation, when it has to turn to an international body that exercises no control over some of the worst working conditions in third world countries.
