Saturday, December 09, 2006

Happy Days Are Here Again! @ The NLRB

On the economic front, today's LATimes has the following good news:
Thanks in part to the National Labor Relations Board, most American workers haven't seen their share of the booming economy
By Dmitri Iglitzin and Steven Hill
(DMITRI IGLITZIN is a labor law attorney in Seattle. STEVEN HILL is a director at the New America Foundation.)
December 9, 2006
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.
and, oh yeah, We don't need no steeenkeen unions:

A nationwide study by the University of Illinois at Chicago found that:

• 30% of employers fire pro-union workers.

• 49% threaten to close a work site when workers try to unionize.

• 82% hire consultants to fight union-organizing drives.

• 91% force employees to attend anti-union meetings with supervisors.

There is a bill languishing in Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act, which already has 215 co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate, which might go a ways toward rectifying these abuses. We'll see how the "new bosses" feel about their labor constituency by the fate it enjoys...

To read the whole piece, click the link in the headline of this post...

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