At this time some of labors best victories have occurred outside the protections of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Some labor organizations, like the National Domestic Workers Alliance or workers centers are achieving wins through activism without identifying as union at all. Farm workers have also had success by working, pressuring, and sometimes boycotting.
This sounds a lot like the old IWW Wobblies, who would not engage in labor contracts, because like the Service Employees International Union’s contract which ties their hands and prevents them from doing a secondary boycotts.
The NLRB, at this time, is a deterrent to labor rather than a help. If the employers have a way to quash an organizing campaign they do not care if they break the NLRB laws because the win versus the imposed fine is no deterrent to the corporations. The NLRB laws need to be rewritten or done away with.
Major unions have abandoned government-run elections in favor of comprehensive attack that leverages some combination of workers, public, media and political pressure to extract agreements from companies by blocking tracks/roads, spilling grain and defying a restraining order. We can see where this is going.
If the NLRB laws are not tightened up to serve the workers and make labor elections fair right now then anarchy will prevail. A member of the NLRB, Terrence Flynn, a Republican, was forced to resign for ethics violations, such as leaking inside information and revealing confidential details to two former board members, one of whom was a former labor adviser to the GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. This proves the GOP tentacles are far reaching. The GOP anti-workers are eating their seed corn and if labor leaves legal contracts for other means of satisfaction it will not be good for the economy and labor will have no choice for we need to feed and protect our families.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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