By John J. Sweeney
Unpaid overtime. Vicious intimidation. Manic behavior. Sexual harassment. Dangerous working conditions. Fired for being sick. Denied family leave.
This is what working men and women of America are going through today. Just read the Bad Boss stories at Working America’s website, www/workingamerica.org. They’re a real insight into the daily nightmares far too many working people endure.
Most people suffering with Bosses from Hell have two choices: Put up with intolerable conditions or quit. If the situation is egregious enough, file a complaint with a state or federal rights agency or take your case to court. Either way, you’ll spend years fighting.
The single best inoculation against Bad Boss disasters is union membership. Not all bosses in union workplaces are great to work for—but with union membership, workers have contract guarantees and grievance procedures that enable them to protect their rights and, when necessary, fight back and win.
Just as Working America’s Bad Boss Contest is surfacing story after story of incompetent, deranged and pretty much evil bosses, America’s workers are facing a huge threat to their freedom to form and join unions.
The Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board is poised to issue a series of decisions (collectively known as the "Kentucky River" cases) that could reclassify hundreds of thousands of workers as “supervisors” who are not eligible for union membership.
Who is vulnerable? Any skilled or experienced worker who sometimes directs or assigns the work of less-skilled and less-experienced co-workers. Some examples are head or “charge” nurses who sometimes direct nursing aides, building trades workers who take apprentices under their wings and port workers—basically, anyone whose Bad Boss wants to block a worker from joining a union by claiming he or she is a “supervisor.”
The Kentucky River decisions are coming at a critical time in history for America’s workers. Big Business has exploited our nation’s weak labor laws, and its allies in Congress and the White House are complicit. When workers try to form unions, a quarter of employers fire pro-union employees, more than half threaten to shut down and three-quarters hire professional union-busters to suppress workers’ will. Rather than protect workers’ rights, as it was created to do, the Bush-appointed NLRB has been an active partner in denying workers’ freedom to form and join unions, for example, taking union rights from or severely weakening them for graduate teaching and research assistants, workers with disabilities and temp agency employees.
Adding grave insult to injury, the Bush NLRB has refused to allow oral arguments in any of its cases—including the vitally important Kentucky River cases.
In a democracy, the people have the right to be heard. In America, workers are supposed to enjoy basic freedoms and rights—including the freedom to form unions. The unholy alliance of Bad Bosses, the Bush administration and their allies in Congress are now engaged in an all-out assault on one of the too-few protections working people have left.
Across America, working people are demanding better. We’re marching and rallying to tell the NLRB not to roll back workers’ rights. I urge you to take a moment right now to let your members of Congress know we won’t be silenced. We won’t be ignored by Bush’s NLRB as it decides cases vital to the future of workers. Tell Congress to demand that the NLRB reverse its arrogant refusal to hear oral arguments in the Kentucky River cases by clicking here. And visit our blog, AFL-CIO Now, to follow the fight to restore our freedom to form unions.
