The National Labor Relations Board dealt a major blow to organized labor when it issued a public ruling on the “Kentucky River” cases on Oct. 3. The ruling, a naked collaboration with the anti-worker Bush administration, held that workers permanently assigned as “shift supervisors” do not have union rights.
Workers classified as “supervisors” under the National Labor Relations Act do not have the right to union
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Up to eight million workers in myriad professions could be affected by the broad scope of the ruling.
“Supervisors” are defined in the law as individuals who control the working fate of others by hiring, firing, disciplining, promoting and so forth—or those who direct other employees’ work while exercising “independent judgment.”
The “Kentucky River” trio of cases were based on charges filed with the NLRB by employers in 2002—Oakwood Healthcare, Golden Crest Healthcare Center and Croft Metals. They were dubbed “Kentucky River” because the charges at issue stemmed from a 2001 Supreme Court ruling bearing that name. The Supreme Court ruling criticized the NLRB’s definition of “supervisor,” opening the door for this legal challenge.
The Oct. 3 NLRB decision means that millions of nurses, retail managers, agricultural workers, construction workers and many more likely will lose all union rights because of a legal technicality. The decision is deeply anti-worker and anti-union. Bosses have been pushing hard for years to expand the limits of who is considered a supervisor.
It is a work of capitalist fiction. Who else would assert that people who enjoy union protection one day suddenly are not protected by union rights the next, even though their pay, work duties and titles remain the same?
It is especially outrageous because workers make important on-the-job decisions every day. Nurses give instructions on how to take care of patients, construction workers decide how to best complete a job, retail managers direct where things go in a store and so on. None of these decisions makes them “supervisors,” the legal equivalent of being corporate managers or bosses.
The “Kentucky River” ruling is part of the overall anti-labor offensive mounted by the capitalist owners and the government. These forces work in tandem to make it harder for workers to organize unions or stay in them. They want workers to have the fewest rights possible.
Attacks against workers under capitalism are constant. The newest concerted assault on organized workers’ rights started in the late 1970s under the Carter administration, and was ratcheted-up significantly by President Reagan. The attacks have continued under Bush, Clinton and now Bush Jr.
Fighting back
Both U.S. union federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, have issued statements appropriately blasting the “Kentucky River” ruling. The AFL-CIO had waged a modest campaign to stave off the ruling, but neither federation has encouraged rank-and-file or grassroots involvement.
Instead, they have directed their energy toward campaigning for Democratic Party candidates in the hopes of winning a majority in Congress this November. Their final goal is to elect a Democrat president in 2008. But putting faith in the Democrats lets the NLRB off the hook and puts the necessity of class-based struggle on the backburner.
The union leaders claim that when a Democrat is president—at least two years from now—the NLRB will magically become pro-worker because the president can appoint more pro-union members. This notion is utterly false. It’s a dead end for the labor movement.
At bottom, the NLRB’s normal role is to regulate labor-management conflict in a way that is beneficial to maintaining labor peace—for the benefit of the ruling class. It does this by channeling the class struggle into a mediated arena that guarantees the interests of the corporations. In recent decades, as labor militancy has ebbed, the NLRB has become a more explicit tool for smashing union organizing drives.
Some unions are organizing to protest the ruling. The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, a 70,000-member national union known for its militant tactics opposing Calif. governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, has announced demonstrations on Thurs., Oct. 5 in Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville and Bangor, Me. to denounce the NLRB’s decision.
The CNA/NNOC is also putting employers on notice that it will strike them if they seek to implement the ruling.
Before the decision was announced, the CNA/NNOC took aggressive measures to bypass the NLRB’s anticipated ruling. The union announced in early September that it had struck a deal with Kaiser Permanente that exempts nurses at 70 Kaiser facilities in Calif. from the “Kentucky River” ruling.
The CNA/NNOC’s tactics alone will not lead to a reversal of the NLRB’s decision, but they help expose the NLRB for what it is.
No agency created by the capitalists can be an adequate substitute for vigorous factory, plant, worksite and street struggles waged with the aim of building class solidarity and class consciousness.
