Workers LOSE BIG Under Labor Board Ruling

Found this post over at DailyKos and it is just too good to not cross-post over here. Here are some selected tidbits. Please click here to read the whole thing.

In one of the most sweeping rulings on union membership in more than 50 years, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) today redefined and expanded the definition of "supervisor," potentially taking away the federally protected freedom to form a union from 8 million workers.

Under federal labor law, supervisors are barred from forming unions.

The board's new definition essentially enables employers to make a supervisor out of any worker who has the authority to assign or direct another and uses independent judgment. Amazingly, the board also ruled that a worker can be classified as a supervisor if he or she spends as little as 10 percent to 15 percent of his or her time overseeing the work of others. The board issed the ruling Sept. 29, but did not release it until today.


In their dissent, Democratic NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh said today's decision:

...threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law; workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees....[M]ost professionals have some supervisory responsibilities in the sense of directing another's work--the lawyer his secretary, the teacher his teacher's aide, the doctor his nurses, the registered nurse her nurse's aid and so on.

Liebman and Walsh wrote that most professionals and other workers could fall under the new definition of supervisor, "who by 2012 could number almost 34 million, accounting for 23.3 percent of the workforce."

Oakwood claimed charge nurses at Heritage Hospital occasionally perform work that involves being a "lead person" or supervising other workers--although they have no authority to hire or fire or discipline the workers.

I read this and thought...curriculum coordinators, reading coaches, department chairs, the list goes on and on. They have no power to hire, fire, or discipline, but could now be "defined" out of the union.

This could be devasting in terms of union membership and, by implication of a reduction in numbers of members, CTU's clout in terms of politics and contract negotiations.

I know that many of our community have recently discussed the impact of charters on union membership. How will we respond to this decision and, god forbid, what if CPS tries to "define" out hundreds of members?

Is anyone at the Merchandise Mart doing working on this?

UPDATE: Check this out over at Firedoglake.

2nd UPDATE: Check out the MyDD post here.