- The Democrats in Congress have sold out their supporters
in the labor movement by giving up the so-called "card-check"
feature of the embattled Employee Free Choice Act, which makes the "reform"
legislation that has been billed is labor's "number one issue"
much less of a reform. Instead of being hammered into line on this issue
by party leaders and by President Obama, who has long pledged to back EFCA,
conservative Democrats in the House and Senate were allowed to join Republicans
in opposing the measure, leading to its replacement with a vague plan to
require quicker secret-ballot elections in union-organizing drives.
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- But largely unnoticed by the corporate media, there has
been some really important good news for working people and the labor movement:
the appointment of three people to fill the long-vacant empty seats on
the five-member National Labor Relations Board, which has the ultimate
job of adjudicating issues under the National Labor Relations Act.
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- The Bush administration had basically gutted the NLRA
by simply failing, since 2007, to fill the three seats that had been emptied
as prior board members' five-year terms had expired. This had left the
NLRB with only two members, one a Democratic, pro-labor appointee, and
one a Republican pro-management appointee. Since these two members would
vote on opposite sides of most issues, the only issues they ended up issuing
decisions on were 400 particularly egregious cases, where they could both
agree-and most of those are still in legal limbo since they have been challenged
in court on the basis that board rules require a three-member quorum.
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- The Obama administration, in April, announced three new
appointments to fill the vacant seats...
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- For the rest of this story, please to to:
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- http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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