Anti-Worker Labor Board Prevents Workers from Sharing in Economy Boom

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/12/14/anti-worker-labor-board-prevents-workers-from-sharing-in-economy-boom/

Anti-Worker Labor Board Prevents Workers from Sharing in Economy Boom

Dmitri Iglitzin, a labor law attorney in Seattle, and Steven Hill, director at the New America Foundation, send us a link to an op-ed piece published Dec. 9 in the Los Angeles Times in which they discuss how most U.S. workers haven’t seen their share of the booming economy, in part because of Bush’s anti-worker National Labor Relations Board.

While President Bush points to low unemployment and a resurgent stock market as signs of a strong economy, most Americans don’t feel so bullish. Median incomes are flat, healthcare costs are soaring, pensions are being de-funded and corporate employers are threatening to shred the social contract with their employees that has prevailed for 60 years.

The balance of economic power has become increasingly one-sided, and one reason is that a key institution—the National Labor Relations Board, the country’s chief arbiter of labor disputes—remains solidly in anti-worker hands. Although a quasi-judicial entity appointed by the president and empowered to adjudicate labor disputes, the NLRB actually sets the rules that govern those disputes and thereby exerts an enormous influence over who prevails. In case after case, the Republican-dominated board has taken positions that have hurt American workers.

Read the full article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-hill9dec09,0,5223376.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail