Hello, all, what follows is a speech I gave last week at a worker's rights rally outside the offices of the National Labor Relations Board in downtown Denver. The NLRB is the Federal agency responsible for enforcing all labor laws in this country and for protecting the health and safety of working people. While most NLRB agents I have met are perfectly good people, doing their best to impartially enforce the law, the NLRB Board of Governors are White House political appointees. These political appointees have systemically sought to erode, undermine and reverse the very laws they are called to serve.
This rally was just one of many rallies in cities across America calling for reform of the NLRB and a return to the humane and democratic values we cherish.
Fixing What's Broken: Reclaiming the NLRB for American Families
Fixing What's Broken: Reclaiming the NLRB for American Families
Delivered on a National Day of Action in Protest of Bush’s “September Steamroll.”
November 15, 2007
Debbie was a dietary clerk in a cafeteria. A union organizing campaign had begun and was quickly beginning to make huge progress is almost every department. Debbie was part of the organizing committee and had begun organizing the rest of the workers in the cafeteria.
Her work wasn’t hard. The cafeteria was chronically understaffed, and workers were expected to routinely work through their lunch breaks and even stay after their shifts – but were not allowed to mark it on their timesheets. Workers who did mark their extra hours had their timesheets “corrected” by their abusive manager. Lots of women had complained about his inappropriate touching through the years, so now that the union was in town, the workers were ready to go.
Needless to say, Debbie’s manager was not happy about the way she was stirring her co-workers up. Soon after, Debbie was interviewed about the organizing campaign by a local paper. She was always a bit of a hot head and she did not mince words about how she felt about the anti-union campaign or about the lack of respect management showed to her and her co-workers.
Two days after the story ran, Debbie was fired. A single mom, struggling with cancer, had just lost her job and her health insurance in one blow.
I was confident we would be able to get her job back. It is illegal to fire workers for their union activities and there were lots of other serious problems here as well. She had been disciplined for falsifying her timesheets – which really just meant for actually writing down the truth – that she had not been taking her breaks. To make matters worse, no one ever told her she was being disciplined – they just put the write-ups in her file without telling her. When they got to that magic third write-up, they terminated her.
Debbie was devastated, as you can imagine. I had always been honest with the workers about the fact that they could be punished or fired for supporting the union, but in Debbie’s case, I was confident because the law-breaking was so blatant. I just kept telling her it would be okay. To make matters worse, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy just two days after losing her job. She was terrified.
I went ahead with the process of filing Unfair Labor Practice charges. The process took months, and meanwhile every day was a day of worry and fear for Debbie and her daughter. In the end, after over six months of struggle, the Board ruled in favor of the employer, without giving any explanation that made any sense (legal or moral) to us. Debbie’s life was in ruins. Too sick with cancer to get a new job, Debbie somehow kept going, scrapping from day to day on food stamps and maxed out credit cards.
I was outraged! I was all ready to appeal to the next level when I had an interesting conversation with the NLRB agent who had been supervising our case. He told me how sorry he was, and advised me not to appeal. He said the higher up the NLRB food chain you went, the more political it got. Once you started dealing with the political appointees you had no chance at all, no matter how strong your case was. He also said that many of the regional and local employees had already been pressured or disciplined for ruling in favor of workers too often and had been ordered to stop – or else.
I appealed anyway, and was denied without explanation. That was in 2002, shortly after the rise to power of the Bush Administration, who had stacked the NLRB Board of Governor’s with corporate minions and political hacks. That was when I realized that the National Labor Relations Board had turned almost overnight, into the National Employer Relations Board.
I know it isn’t my fault, but I have always felt I let Debbie down. To this day I can see the look on her face when I had to tell her the bad news. Ever since that day, I have promised myself that I would do anything I could to share Debbie’s story and to fight to reform the NLRB. I am glad to be here with you today my sisters and brothers!
I wish I could tell you that Debbie’s story is an isolated one, but I can’t. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Debbie’s out there right now – waiting for justice that may never come. Since George W. Bush and his cronies began stacking the Board with their friends, they have effectively dismantled, distorted and undermined the only institution in the United States whose job it is to enforce labor laws and to insure justice for workers.
We live in a nation where 1 out of every five union activists will be illegally fired during a union drive, but where employers are seldom punished for breaking the law. We live in a nation where the union election process is even less democratic than in totalitarian states like the Ukraine and Armenia.
As University of Oregon Professor Gordon Lafer writes:
“At every step of the way, from the beginning to an end of a union election, NLRB procedures fail to live up to the standards of US democracy. Apart from the use of secret ballots, there is not a single aspect of the NLRB process that does not violate the norms we hold sacred for political elections. The unequal access to voter lists, the absence of financial controls, monopoly control of both media and campaigning within the workplace, the use of economic power to force participation in political meetings, the tolerance of thinly disguised threats, open-ended delays in implementing the results on an election - all of these things constitute a profound departure from the norms that have governed US democracy since its inception”[1]
We live in a nation where it now takes the NLRB over five and a half years to resolve the cases that it refers to as the “highest priority” cases, and where even workers whose claims are supported by the board may have to wait literally decades to get any back pay at all. We live in a nation where the NLRB, the sole agency responsible for insuring the rights of a couple hundred million American workers, has had its budget slashed so badly that its current staffing levels are roughly the same as they were in the 1950s even though claims have skyrocketed.
November 15, 2007
Debbie was a dietary clerk in a cafeteria. A union organizing campaign had begun and was quickly beginning to make huge progress is almost every department. Debbie was part of the organizing committee and had begun organizing the rest of the workers in the cafeteria.
Her work wasn’t hard. The cafeteria was chronically understaffed, and workers were expected to routinely work through their lunch breaks and even stay after their shifts – but were not allowed to mark it on their timesheets. Workers who did mark their extra hours had their timesheets “corrected” by their abusive manager. Lots of women had complained about his inappropriate touching through the years, so now that the union was in town, the workers were ready to go.
Needless to say, Debbie’s manager was not happy about the way she was stirring her co-workers up. Soon after, Debbie was interviewed about the organizing campaign by a local paper. She was always a bit of a hot head and she did not mince words about how she felt about the anti-union campaign or about the lack of respect management showed to her and her co-workers.
Two days after the story ran, Debbie was fired. A single mom, struggling with cancer, had just lost her job and her health insurance in one blow.
I was confident we would be able to get her job back. It is illegal to fire workers for their union activities and there were lots of other serious problems here as well. She had been disciplined for falsifying her timesheets – which really just meant for actually writing down the truth – that she had not been taking her breaks. To make matters worse, no one ever told her she was being disciplined – they just put the write-ups in her file without telling her. When they got to that magic third write-up, they terminated her.
Debbie was devastated, as you can imagine. I had always been honest with the workers about the fact that they could be punished or fired for supporting the union, but in Debbie’s case, I was confident because the law-breaking was so blatant. I just kept telling her it would be okay. To make matters worse, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy just two days after losing her job. She was terrified.
I went ahead with the process of filing Unfair Labor Practice charges. The process took months, and meanwhile every day was a day of worry and fear for Debbie and her daughter. In the end, after over six months of struggle, the Board ruled in favor of the employer, without giving any explanation that made any sense (legal or moral) to us. Debbie’s life was in ruins. Too sick with cancer to get a new job, Debbie somehow kept going, scrapping from day to day on food stamps and maxed out credit cards.
I was outraged! I was all ready to appeal to the next level when I had an interesting conversation with the NLRB agent who had been supervising our case. He told me how sorry he was, and advised me not to appeal. He said the higher up the NLRB food chain you went, the more political it got. Once you started dealing with the political appointees you had no chance at all, no matter how strong your case was. He also said that many of the regional and local employees had already been pressured or disciplined for ruling in favor of workers too often and had been ordered to stop – or else.
I appealed anyway, and was denied without explanation. That was in 2002, shortly after the rise to power of the Bush Administration, who had stacked the NLRB Board of Governor’s with corporate minions and political hacks. That was when I realized that the National Labor Relations Board had turned almost overnight, into the National Employer Relations Board.
I know it isn’t my fault, but I have always felt I let Debbie down. To this day I can see the look on her face when I had to tell her the bad news. Ever since that day, I have promised myself that I would do anything I could to share Debbie’s story and to fight to reform the NLRB. I am glad to be here with you today my sisters and brothers!
I wish I could tell you that Debbie’s story is an isolated one, but I can’t. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Debbie’s out there right now – waiting for justice that may never come. Since George W. Bush and his cronies began stacking the Board with their friends, they have effectively dismantled, distorted and undermined the only institution in the United States whose job it is to enforce labor laws and to insure justice for workers.
We live in a nation where 1 out of every five union activists will be illegally fired during a union drive, but where employers are seldom punished for breaking the law. We live in a nation where the union election process is even less democratic than in totalitarian states like the Ukraine and Armenia.
As University of Oregon Professor Gordon Lafer writes:
“At every step of the way, from the beginning to an end of a union election, NLRB procedures fail to live up to the standards of US democracy. Apart from the use of secret ballots, there is not a single aspect of the NLRB process that does not violate the norms we hold sacred for political elections. The unequal access to voter lists, the absence of financial controls, monopoly control of both media and campaigning within the workplace, the use of economic power to force participation in political meetings, the tolerance of thinly disguised threats, open-ended delays in implementing the results on an election - all of these things constitute a profound departure from the norms that have governed US democracy since its inception”[1]
We live in a nation where it now takes the NLRB over five and a half years to resolve the cases that it refers to as the “highest priority” cases, and where even workers whose claims are supported by the board may have to wait literally decades to get any back pay at all. We live in a nation where the NLRB, the sole agency responsible for insuring the rights of a couple hundred million American workers, has had its budget slashed so badly that its current staffing levels are roughly the same as they were in the 1950s even though claims have skyrocketed.
We cannot blame our local NLRB folks too much for these endless delays when we are living in a nation where a Federal program to promote sport fishing has an annual budget that is significantly larger than that of the entire National Labor Relations Board! We live in a nation where Janet Jackson can be fined $550,000 for her Superbowl wardrobe “malfunction”, but the NLRB is allowed to fine employers exactly nothing for willfully bribing, threatening, assaulting or firing pro-union employees.
But Bush’s Board has been very busy lately. In the month of September alone, the NLRB has issued a whopping sixty-one decisions, the vast majority of which are anti-worker: making it harder than ever to collect back pay, making it easier for employers to discriminate against union organizers and making it much harder to form a union in the first place.
This, my brothers and sisters, is the nation we are living in.
But what is the NLRB supposed to be doing? Enforcing the National Labor Relations Act! That’s it – that’s their only job. Let me tell you what the law actually says:
“It is declared to be the policy of the United States to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and to protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.”[2]
That’s it – that’s the law – “to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and to protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization for mutual aid or protection!” It is not our national policy just to allow unions – but to actively protect and encourage them! That’s the law!!! Has Bush’s Board even read the law they are supposed to be enforcing?
So why am I, a minister, up here talking to you about workers rights? I’ll tell you why – because in the end, all good laws are rooted in justice and in love. All good laws are designed to help us build a land where all people can live lives of dignity, peace and freedom, where all people can finally claim their inheritance as the beautiful and sacred beings they are – truly children of god.
This law, rooted in the traditional values of fairness, equality, freedom and justice – has been brutally manipulated and undermined by the very people we have entrusted with safeguarding it. This is a monstrous betrayal of our democracy and our trust – and let me tell you my friends, it is not just a legal crime, but a moral crime, and we cannot stand by for even one more day while families like Debbie’s are being tossed into the gutter for simply standing up and speaking the truth!
We cannot stand by while the Bush Board eerily echoes the book of Jeremiah, where it is written that:
26 Scoundrels are found among my people;
But Bush’s Board has been very busy lately. In the month of September alone, the NLRB has issued a whopping sixty-one decisions, the vast majority of which are anti-worker: making it harder than ever to collect back pay, making it easier for employers to discriminate against union organizers and making it much harder to form a union in the first place.
This, my brothers and sisters, is the nation we are living in.
But what is the NLRB supposed to be doing? Enforcing the National Labor Relations Act! That’s it – that’s their only job. Let me tell you what the law actually says:
“It is declared to be the policy of the United States to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and to protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.”[2]
That’s it – that’s the law – “to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and to protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization for mutual aid or protection!” It is not our national policy just to allow unions – but to actively protect and encourage them! That’s the law!!! Has Bush’s Board even read the law they are supposed to be enforcing?
So why am I, a minister, up here talking to you about workers rights? I’ll tell you why – because in the end, all good laws are rooted in justice and in love. All good laws are designed to help us build a land where all people can live lives of dignity, peace and freedom, where all people can finally claim their inheritance as the beautiful and sacred beings they are – truly children of god.
This law, rooted in the traditional values of fairness, equality, freedom and justice – has been brutally manipulated and undermined by the very people we have entrusted with safeguarding it. This is a monstrous betrayal of our democracy and our trust – and let me tell you my friends, it is not just a legal crime, but a moral crime, and we cannot stand by for even one more day while families like Debbie’s are being tossed into the gutter for simply standing up and speaking the truth!
We cannot stand by while the Bush Board eerily echoes the book of Jeremiah, where it is written that:
26 Scoundrels are found among my people;
Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings.
27Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery;therefore they have become great and rich,
28 they have grown fat and sleek.They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
30An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land."[3]
But we don’t have to stand for this! We do not have to swallow hollow rhetoric about family values without family wages; we don’t have to accept the right to life without the right to a just livelihood or basic health care; we don’t have to cheer for freedom, justice and liberty in Iraq and elsewhere while those very things are being stripped away from us at home!
Sisters and brothers, I want you to hear me now – every single faith tradition puts love and justice at the very center of creation. The teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, the Buddha, and countless others all stand with us today. Let us never forget that Jesus was not an investment banker. He was not a politician or a corporate attorney. Jesus was a carpenter – and I am willing to bet he still carries his union card with pride!
I don’t expect to be able to convert Bush’s Board to my way of thinking. I can’t make them love all human beings as my faith calls me to love them – but I do think they could at least read the law and enforce it in good faith! If they cannot or will not do that – then I say shut it down – and keep it shut down until they are ready to stop being the Bush’s Board and start being everyone’s Labor Board again!
[1] Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., “Free and AFir? How Labor Laws Fail US Democratic Standards (Washington, D.C.:American Rights at Work, 2005) p. 27
[2] National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The full text can be found here: http://www.union-organizing.com/nlra.html
[3] The Hebrew Bible, Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 5, verses 26-30
[1] Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., “Free and AFir? How Labor Laws Fail US Democratic Standards (Washington, D.C.:American Rights at Work, 2005) p. 27
[2] National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The full text can be found here: http://www.union-organizing.com/nlra.html
[3] The Hebrew Bible, Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 5, verses 26-30
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