#national boards

[b3aches]

Companies That Union-Bust Must Now Automatically Recognize Union, NLRB Rules

The National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling on Friday that changes the framework for unionizations, making it easier for workers to organize and harder for companies to fight back against them. The new process comes as part of a decision in the case between Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, where the Board found that the employer had committed over 20 “instances of objectionable or unlawful misconduct” between the filing of the union election petition and the election itself, intending to dissuade workers from organizing.

#NLRB #national labor relations board #union #labor unions #union strong #union busting #cemex construction materials pacific #teamsters #international brotherhood of teamsters #teamsters union

[mostlysignssomeportents]

NLRB rules that any union busting triggers automatic union recognition

Tonight (September 6) at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

American support for unions is at its highest level in generations, from 70% (general population) to 88% (Millenials) – and yet, American unionization rates are pathetic.

That's about to change.

The National Labor Relations Board just handed down a landmark ruling – the Cemex case – that "brought worker rights back from the dead."

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-workers-rights-back/

At issue in Cemex was what the NLRB should do about employers that violate labor law during union drives. For decades, even the most flagrantly illegal union-busting was met with a wrist-slap. For example, if a boss threatened or fired an employee for participating in a union drive, the NLRB would typically issue a small fine and order the employer to re-hire the worker and provide back-pay.

Everyone knows that "a fine is a price." The NLRB's toothless response to cheating presented an easily solved equation for corrupt, union-hating bosses: if the fine amounts to less than the total, lifetime costs of paying a fair wage and offering fair labor conditions, you should cheat – hell, it's practically a fiduciary duty:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/468061

Enter the Cemex ruling: once a majority of workers have signed a union card, any Unfair Labor Practice by their employer triggers immediate, automatic recognition of the union. In other words, the NLRB has fitted a tilt sensor in the American labor pinball machine, and if the boss tries to cheat, they automatically lose.

Cemex is a complete 180, a radical transformation of the American labor regulator from a figleaf that legitimized union busting to an actual enforcer, upholding the law that Congress passed, rather than the law that America's oligarchs wish Congress had passed. It represents a turning point in the system of lawless impunity for American plutocracy.

In the words of Frank Wilhoit, it is is a repudiation of the conservative dogma: "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect":

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

It's also a stunning example of what regulatory competence looks like. The Biden administration is a decidedly mixed bag. On the one hand there are empty suits masquerading as technocrats, champions of the party's centrist wing (slogan: "Everything is fine and change is impossible"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

But the progressive, Sanders/Warren wing of the party installed some fantastically competent, hard-charging, principled fighters, who are chapter-and-verse on their regulatory authority and have the courage to use that authority:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

They embody the old joke about the photocopier technician who charges "$1 to kick the photocopier and $79 to know where to kick it." The best Biden appointees have their boots firmly laced, and they're kicking that mother:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

One such expert kicker is NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. Abruzzo has taken a series of muscular, bold moves to protect American workers, turning the tide in the class war that the 1% has waged on workers since the Reagan administration. For example, Abruzzo is working to turn worker misclassification – the fiction that an employee is a small business contracting with their boss, a staple of the "gig economy" – into an Unfair Labor Practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/10/see-you-in-the-funny-papers/bidens-legacy

She's also waging war on robo-scab companies: app-based employment "platforms" like Instawork that are used to recruit workers to cross picket lines, under threat of being blocked from the app and blackballed by hundreds of local employers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

With Cemex, Abruzzo is restoring a century-old labor principle that has been gathering dust for generations: the idea that workers have the right to organize workplace gemocracies without fear of retaliation, harassment, or reprisals.

But as Harold Meyerson writes for The American Prospect, the Cemex ruling has its limits. Even if the NLRB forces and employer to recognize a union, they can't force the employer to bargain in good faith for a union contract. The National Labor Relations Act prohibits the Board from imposing a contract.

That's created a loophole that corrupt bosses have driven entire fleets of trucks through. Workers who attain union recognition face years-long struggles to win a contract, as their bosses walk away from negotiations or offer farcical "bargaining positions" in the expectation that they'll be rejected, prolonging the delay.

Democrats have been trying to fix this loophole since the LBJ years, but they've been repeatedly blocked in the senate. But Abruzzo is a consummate photocopier kicker, and she's taking aim. In Thrive Pet Healthcare, Abruzzo has argued that failing to bargain in good faith for a contract is itself an Unfair Labor Practice. That means the NLRB has the authority to act to correct it – they can't order a contract, but they can order the employer to give workers "wages, benefits, hours, and such that are comparable to those provided by comparable unionized companies in their field."

Mitch McConnell is a piece of shit, but he's no slouch at kicking photocopiers himself. For a whole year, McConnell has blocked senate confirmation hearings to fill a vacant seat on the NLRB. In the short term, this meant that the three Dems on the board were able to hand down these bold rulings without worrying about their GOP colleagues.

But McConnell was playing a long game. Board member Gwynne Wilcox's term is about to expire. If her seat remains vacant, the three remaining board members won't be able to form a quorum, and the NLRB won't be able to do anything.

As Meyerson writes, centrist Dems have refused to push McConnell on this, hoping for comity and not wanting to violate decorum. But Chuck Schumer has finally bestirred himself to fight this issue, and Alaska GOP senator Lisa Murkowski has already broken with her party to move Wilcox's confirmation to a floor vote.

The work of enforcers like DoJ Antitrust Division boss Jonathan Kanter, FTC chair Lina Khan, and SEC chair Gary Gensler is at the heart of Bidenomics: the muscular, fearless deployment of existing regulatory authority to make life better for everyday Americans.

But of course, "existing regulatory authority" isn't the last word. The judges filling stolen seats on the illegitimate Supreme Court had invented the "major questions doctrine" and have used it as a club to attack Biden's photocopier-kickers. There's real danger that Cemex – and other key actions – will get fast-tracked to SCOTUS so the dotards in robes can shatter our dreams for a better America.

Meyerson is cautiously optimistic here. At 40% (!), the Court's approval rating is at a low not seen since the New Deal showdowns. The Supremes don't have an army, they don't have cops, they just have legitimacy. If Americans refuse to acknowledge their decisions, all they can do it sit and stew:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/26/mint-the-coin-etc-etc/#blitz-em

The Court knows this. That's why they fume so publicly about attacks on their legitimacy. Without legitimacy, they're nothing. With the Supremes' support at 40% and union support at 70%, any judicial attack on Cemex could trigger term-limits, court-packing, and other doomsday scenarios that will haunt the relatively young judges for decades, as the seats they stole dwindle into irrelevance. Meyerson predicts that this will weigh on them, and may stay their hands.

Meyerson might be wrong, of course. No one ever lost money betting on the self-destructive hubris of Federalist Society judges. But even if he's wrong, his point is important. If the Supremes frustrate the democratic will of the American people, we have to smash the Supremes. Term limits, court-packing, whatever it takes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

And the more we talk about this – the more we make this consequence explicit – the more it will weigh on them, and the better the chance that they'll surprise us. That's already happening! The Supremes just crushed the Sackler opioid crime-family's dream of keeping their billions in blood-money:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

But if it doesn't stop them? If they crush this dream, too? Pack the court. Impose term limits. Make it the issue. Don't apologize, don't shrug it off, don't succumb to learned helplessness. Make it our demand. Make it a litmus test: "If elected, will you vote to pack the court and clear the way for democratic legitimacy?"

Meanwhile, Cemex is already bearing fruit. After an NYC Trader Joe's violated the law to keep Trader Joe's United from organizing a store, the workers there have petitioned to have their union automatically recognized under the Cemex rule:

https://truthout.org/articles/trader-joes-union-files-to-force-company-to-recognize-union-under-new-nlrb-rule/

With the NLRB clearing the regulatory obstacles to union recognition, America's largest unions are awakening from their own long slumbers. For decades, unions have spent a desultory 3% of their budgets on organizing workers into new locals. But a leadership upset in the AFL-CIO has unions ready to catch a wave with the young workers and their 88% approval rating, with a massive planned organizing drive:

https://prospect.org/labor/labors-john-l-lewis-moment/

Meyerson calls on other large unions to follow suit, and the unions seem ready to do so, with new leaders and new militancy at the Teamsters and UAW, and with SEIU members at unionized Starbucks waiting for their first contracts.

Turning union-supporting workers into unionized workers is key to fighting Supreme Court sabotage. Organized labor will give fighters like Abruzzo the political cover she needs to Get Shit Done. A better America is possible. It's within our grasp. Though there is a long way to go, we are winning crucial victories all the time.

The centrist message that everything is fine and change is impossible is designed to demoralize you, to win the fight in your mind so they don't have to win it in the streets and in the jobsite. We don't have to give them that victory. It's ours for the taking.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks

#nlrb #cemex #unions #labor #class war #photocopier kickers #ulp #unfair labor practices #jennifer abruzzo #thrive pet care #national labor review board #scotus #afl-cio #trader joes #harold meyerson #labor day #pluralistic

[troythecatfish]

#threads #threads app #current events #social justice #human rights #important #political #political posting #politics #workers rights #late stage capitalism #capitalism #anti capitalism #national labor relations board #unions #union #labor unions #us politics #usa politics #american politics #united states politics

[dduane]

“…the NLRB said that moving forward, when unions request recognition based on majority support, employers must either recognize and bargain with a union or file a petition seeking an election.

“However, if an employer seeking an election commits unfair labor practices, the petition will be dismissed and the employer will be ordered to bargain with the union, the board said.”

This is really going to change some things in the US…

#US politics #labor law #National Labor Relations Board

[reasonsforhope]

Version that doesn't require sign-in.

"Hot Labor Summer just became a scorcher.

[On August 25, 2023], 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 [a.k.a. immediately] 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...

Since the days of Lyndon Johnson, every time that the Democrats have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, they’ve tried to put some teeth back into the steadily more toothless NLRA. But they’ve never managed to muster the 60 votes needed to get those measures through the Senate. The Cemex ruling actually goes beyond much of what was proposed in those never-enacted bills."

-via The American Prospect, August 28, 2023

--

Note: I didn't include it because the paragraphs about it went super into the weeds, but the reason all of this is happening is because of the NRLB's general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who was appointed by Biden. In fact, according to this article, this "secures Abruzzo’s place as the most important public official to secure American workers’ rights since New York Sen. Robert Wagner, who authored the NLRA in 1935." Voting matters

#labor #labor rights #labor unions #workers rights #unions #unionize #nlrb #national labor relations board #biden #biden administration #united states #us politics #voting matters #american politics #organized labor #union busting #good news #hope #hope posting #hot labor summer #pro union

[muffinlance]

I'm sorry, this was bothering me enough to send in an ask.

The stupid question is: how strict is Earth-Kingdom-is-China vs Fire-Kingdom-is-Japan generally? I mostly ask because although none of the canon characters use real Japanese names, but it feels like everyone uses Japanese names for Fire Kingdom and Chinese for Earth, which makes Chinese Wanyi for Zuko's ship not fit in.

I mean, the waters are muddied from China's historical domination over the area, and it's a really great pun, but I woke up and my brain wouldn't let go of the entirely petty issue.

Ugh. Sorry for the stupid ask, especially since I don't come bearing any like funny trivia with to mitigate with. Please feel free to disregard as well, especially since I'm too cowardly to link to my actual tumblr account.

There's absolutely no strictness, because that's a fanon division anyway, and not one I adhere to. Fanon is fake and we can make of it what we want, and I want the pretty ship name!

#I tend to use Japanese names and culture #because I minored in Japanese and lived in Japan for awhile #I use Chinese and other Asian-country concepts as I become aware of them #the show itself deliberately mixes cultures across the board #probably because they realized making the Fire Nation == Japan would be #Uh #Rather on the nose #Historically speaking

[nationalparksandnature]

National park mobile wallpaper

#nature #scenic #scenery #beautiful #national park #nature photography #nature shots #waterfall #board walk

[iww-gnv]

In the latest sign of a growing backlash within corporate America to the 88-year-old federal agency that enforces labor rights, Amazon argued in a legal filing on Thursday that the National Labor Relations Board was unconstitutional. The move followed a similar argument by SpaceX, the rocket company founded and run by Elon Musk, in a legal complaint in January, and by Trader Joe’s during a labor board hearing a few weeks later. The labor board consists of a prosecutorial arm, which issues complaints against employers or unions deemed to have violated federally protected labor rights; administrative judges, who hear complaints; and a five-member board in Washington, to which decisions can be appealed. Amazon’s filing was part of a case before an administrative judge in which labor board prosecutors have accused Amazon of illegally retaliating against workers at a Staten Island warehouse known as JFK8, which unionized two years ago.

#news #labor news #amazon #spacex #elon musk #us news #national labor relations board #nlrb

[celebsresource]

Jessica Chastain attends the National Board Of Review 2024 Awards Gala on January 11, 2024 in New York City, NY

#jessica chastain #jessicachastainedit #userpcultures #flawlessbeautyqueens #femaledaily #glamoroussource #thequeensofbeauty #breathtakingqueens #dailywomen #userladiesblr #userladiesofcinema #* #dailyactresses #dailywomenedit #flawlesscelebs #ladiesofcinema #femalestunning #events #actresses #national board of review 2024 awards gala

[oliveoomph]

Anne Hathaway & Jessica Chastain

National Board of Review Gala, New York, Jan. 11, 2024.

#anne hathaway #jessica chastain #actress #national board of review gala

[saywhat-politics]

#national labor relations board #house republicans

[izhunny]

So after seeing this tweet from 4-ish hours ago I had a think. If I understand this correctly...

If this indicates they are indeed going on strike, word-of-mouth will become the only means of promotion for already completed works being released or awaiting a scheduled release caught in this struggle. No actors on red carpet at premieres, no promo junkets with fan service, or interviews about projects so many have worked so hard to create. Actors will be committed to no work of any kind(including promos) moving forward from the stoppage of a strike.

Word-of-mouth by the public will become make or break for the duration for these unlucky works in the interim.

Please, let us all pay attention and support these unions in seeking better working conditions and commensurate pay by following their lead. Whatever that lead is, including supporting works already produced.

#sag-aftra #union solidarity #wga strike #aim your displeasure at the companies trying to bust unions #not at those who simply want to create under fair conditions with reasonable pay for that work #it is neither the writers nor actors fault for this situation #i stand with the writers #i stand with the actors #the SAG-AFTRA national board has not voted yet but seem poised to do so in favor of a strike at time of posting #watch the union for updates and official releases not gossip columns

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Classes start this week at Purcell Collegiate School (PCS), an international boarding school in B.C.'s southeast. 

The first cohort of 12 students from across Canada, and countries like Japan and China, are living in a former residential school in the Aq'am community, within the Ktunaxa Nation. 

The building, St. Eugene Mission, was a residential school from 1912 until 1970.

In 1992, the community began the process of turning the building into a resort, and today it's an award-winning hotel, golf course and casino that is owned by the Ktunaxa Nation and Shuswap Indian Band. 

Now, a portion of it is also home to international students while they live and learn in the community.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #canadian #residential schools #residential schools tw #purcell collegiate school #british columbia #BC #First Nations #Ktunaxa Nation #boarding school #international students

[tmblrfuckingsucksass]

Gal Gadot at the National Board of Review Gala

New York City - January 9, 2018

#gal gadot #celebrity #national board of review #gala event #blue dress #elie saab #stunningly gorgeous #those beautiful eyes #stylish and sophisticated #classy sexy #patty jenkins #dat smile #so fucking hot #goddess

[animatejournal]

Hunger (La faim) | Director: Peter Foldes Studio: National Film Board of Canada | CA, 1974

#Hunger #CGI #NFB #National Film Board of Canada #Animation #Peter Foldes #Gluttony #Computer Animation #Canada #La Faim #Surreal #Greed

[phantomladyoverparis]

Christopher's Movie Matinee (1968), dir. Mort Ransen

#Christopher's Movie Matinee #Mort Ransen #cinéma vérité #1960s #1968 #documentary #national film board of canada #canadian cinema