Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on Bush's Labor Board Nominations

January 29, 2008 -- The Bush Administration’s bury-bad-news-on-a-Friday-afternoon nominations to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are a blatant attempt to keep a Labor board with an unbalanced, anti-worker bias, and they would be poisonous to America’s working families.

Chairman Robert Battista has been Bush’s point man for his war on workers. President Bush’s renomination of Battista for another 5-year term is a clear effort to stack the deck in favor of Big Business over working people, as is his nomination of Gerald Morales, an attorney who has spent his professional career representing management and has no history defending workers’ rights.

Under the Bush Board, the National Labor Relations Board has abandoned its statutory mission to protect workers’ right to form unions and promote collective bargaining. In a series of results-oriented decisions, the Bush board has stripped workers of their rights while protecting employers -- and with breathtaking bias. Last year, the board redefined the term “supervisor” to deny as many 8 million workers the freedom to join unions. The Board has also stripped graduate employees, temporary workers and disabled workers of their rights and routinely denied justice through the most delay-ridden system since the inception of the National Labor Relations Act.

The anti-worker bias of the Bush Board was demonstrated again last week when the Sixth Circuit reversed a decision in an Ohio case, Jolliff v. NLRB. In that decision, the Bush Labor Board’s majority had upheld the firing of three truck drivers who sent a letter to their employer's corporate headquarters complaining about working conditions, arguing that writing the letter was not protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act. The Sixth Circuit disagreed, holding that the Board majority had relied on "misinterpretations of testimony," and a "bizarre reading" of a statement made by one of the fired drivers.

These nominations are an unacceptable continuation of a systematic assault on workers’ rights, likely to result in more decisions like Jolliff. Working men and women of this country deserve a Labor Board that will protect their rights, not roll them back with impunity.

Source: AFL-CIO

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