What’s Disgusting? Union Busting!
Two weeks ago—I know, decades ago in the blogosphere—I joined a labor movement march to protest a series of anti-worker, anti-union decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
According to the AFL-CIO, the NLRB’s decisions:
• Make it harder to form unions through majority sign-up. Because the system for forming unions in this country is broken, more workers are forming unions through majority sign-up. But the NLRB ruled that when workers choose a union through majority sign-up, the employer must notify the workforce that just 30 percent of them can petition for an election—even if bargaining is under way. A dissenting NLRB member called this “cutting voluntary recognition off at the knees.”• Make it harder for illegally fired workers to recover back pay. NLRB remedies against employers who break the law are notoriously weak and ineffective. Instead of enforcing the law more effectively, the [NLRB] made it less costly for employers to break the law. In one case, workers who were illegally discriminated against 17 years ago still have not received back pay. In another, workers who picketed after being fired for supporting a union were denied back pay due to concerns of “reward(ing) idleness.”
• Make it legal for employers to discriminate against union supporters in the hiring process and to refuse to hire a worker who comes to the job intending to try to form a union.
So on November 15, in rain-drenched Washington, I marched with over 1,000 people from the office of the AFL-CIO to the national NLRB office, calling for it to be “closed for renovations” until further notice. Similar marches took place in over 20 cities across the country.
Two choice chants from the march were “Workers’ Rights Under Attack, What Do We Do? Stand Up, Fight Back!” and “What’s Disgusting? Union Busting!”
But the erosion of workers’ rights is no laughing matter. And Jews have long understood this. “You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow Israelite or a stranger in one of the communities of your land,” the Torah commands. “You must pay out the wages due on the same day, before the sun sets, for the worker is needy and urgently depends on it” (Deut. 24:14–15).
The NLRB’s recent decisions make a mockery of these fundamental rights. Union busting really is disgusting; and while it may have rhyme, it certainly lacks reason.