This, From Late Last Month, Is A Truly Enormous Deal. In Effect, A New NLRB Ruling Says That Employers

The American Prospect

Biden’s NLRB Brings Workers’ Rights Back From the Dead

A decision last Friday makes union organizing possible again.

This, from late last month, is a truly enormous deal. In effect, a new NLRB ruling says that employers caught engaging in unfair practices during union elections (which most do!) will be punished by having to immediately recognize the union and begin bargaining. This reverses an old ruling which led to a massive increase in unfair practices by employers seeking to block union drives. Getting the NLRB to consistently enforce this will be a challenge, but nonetheless this is one of the most pro-labor reforms the US has seen in a very long time.

...the National Labor Relations Board released its most important ruling in many decades. In a party-line decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, the Board ruled that when a majority of a company’s employees file union affiliation cards, the employer can either voluntarily recognize their union or, if not, ask the Board to run a union recognition election. If, in the run-up to or during that election, the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as illegally firing pro-union workers (which has become routine in nearly every such election over the past 40 years, as the penalties have been negligible), the Board will order the employer to recognize the union and enter forthwith into bargaining. The Cemex decision was preceded by another, one day earlier, in which the Board, also along party lines, set out rules for representation elections which required them to be held promptly after the Board had been asked to conduct them, curtailing employers’ ability to delay them, often indefinitely. Taken together, this one-two punch effectively makes union organizing possible again, after decades in which unpunished employer illegality was the most decisive factor in reducing the nation’s rate of private-sector unionization from roughly 35 percent to the bare 6 percent at which it stands today... “This is a sea change, a home run for workers,” said Brian Petruska, an attorney for the Laborers Union who authored a 2017 law review article on how to effectively restore to workers their right to collective bargaining enshrined in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which was all but nullified by the act’s weakening over the past half-century. Taken together, Petruska added, last week’s decisions recreate “a system with no tolerance for employers’ coercion of their employees” when their employees seek their legal right to collective bargaining... In the profile I wrote of Abruzzo in the April 2022 print issue of the Prospect, I cited numbers from Petruska’s article that showed “in the five years before Joy Silk was struck down, charges of employer intimidation totaled about 1,000 cases a year. Once the softball remedies of Gissel became the standard, charges exploded to a peak of 6,493 in 1981, after which they fell along with unionization efforts generally.” As the new post–Joy Silk tolerance for employer coercion became the norm, interest in organizing withered... Cemex should open the door to more organizing campaigns than American labor has seen for decades, at least among those unions (SEIU, CWA, the Teamsters, National Nurses United, the private-sector wings of AFSCME, and the American Federation of Teachers, to name just some) that still have robust organizing departments. It could help the Steelworkers, the newly led United Auto Workers, and the Machinists to organize the federal incentive–driven factories springing up in the historically anti-union South.

Senate has officially codified its dress code so that Sen. Fetterman has to wear a suit on the floor of congress. Here is the real, actual press release his office just issued about it

I had no opinion on government dress codes before 24 hours ago, but my mind has been changed by the sheer magnitude of raw fury that has been unleashed among the professional conservative class in response to the ruling that Sen. Fetterman is allowed to wear shorts and a hoodie on Capitol Hill. It has been driving them crazy. I have been negatively polarized into the belief that we should ban suits and jackets entirely

Why is it that Portland and SF liberals and even LA liberals and NYC liberals are becoming so reactionary but Chicago and Minneapolis are staying more progressive? My guess is that rents being lower in Chicago and Minneapolis means fewer homeless people than those other cities so the libs there are less negatively polarized and also it has to do with the fact that those bigger coastal cities have higher home values so liberals there can be more reactionary to protect their windfall gains on their property values.

I was wondering if they would impeach Biden for “the border” and then I remember that if I ever entered politics and somehow got as far as Biden, I would be tarred and feathered for basically defying immigration law and going over the visa limits set by congress and telling them to shove it and then if I went down I would adopt some lib version of the dark maga mentality with “in reality, they’re after you, I’m just in the way” mixed in with Lula’s “those in power can kill one, two, or even 100 roses, but they can’t stop the coming of spring”.

Joe Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line. Well done

Joe Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line. Well done